"For me it doesn't mean voting pro-Chirac, it means voting against Le Pen, but still I'll go with a clothes peg on my nose," he said.

But Bove, an Asterix the Gaul figure with a walrus moustache who has become a trademark hero of the anti-globalisation movement, stressed he would go to the polls grudgingly.

"Whichever the political affiliations or the resentment against the system, we all need to vote (Chirac) that Sunday," Bove, who shot to world fame when he ransacked a McDonald's site in southwestern France in 1999, told Reuters in an interview.

"We have no other choice."

Bove also echoed a call by left-wing politicians, activist groups and students to join a massive march on May 1 to demonstrate the broad opposition to the anti-immigrant leader.

"May 1 should be the opportunity for the French to show a massive rejection against Le Pen, there should be at least one million people in the streets of France that day," he said.

"We must go out and beat the extreme right and Le Pen, both in the streets and in the ballot boxes," he added.

FEW WEEKS BEFORE JAIL

Bove's appearance in the May Day protest could be one of his last in public for a while. The leader of the Confederation Paysanne of small farmers is due to enter jail soon after the presidential elections.

Bove was sentenced to three months in prison in February for ransacking the MacDonald's outlet to protest against U.S tariffs, but the prosecutor put off his imprisonment until after the vote to make sure Bove did not "muddy the political debate".

The unionist said he would serve his sentence despite numerous calls by high-profile politicians to keep him out of jail to avoid turning him into a martyr.

"It is out of question for me to hide or to try to find ways not to go," Bove said. "I have done something illegal so I accept to be condemned for that."

Bove estimated he would have to stay in jail around 50 days - three months minus 19 days already served under investigation and reductions of sentence he hopes to obtain.

GMO ATTACKS TO CONTINUE

The anti-globalisation guru should thus be back on the public stage in July, just in time to resume his attacks on experimental fields of genetically modified organisms (GMO).

Bove was twice sentenced to a total of 14 months in jail for these attacks and the cases are due to be reviewed by France's highest court later this year.

He said he would continue battling GM crops as long as there was no scientific evidence that the tests were safe.

"If the government does not act to protect the people against the consequences of GM experiments, we'll be obliged to start (the attacks) again," Bove said.

He added anti-GMOs activists would try to remain within the law so not to worsen pending legal actions against their leader.

"There are ways to destroy experimental fields without hurting the plants," Bove said, adding that the latest idea was to soak fields with non-GM pollen in order to wreck the results of the scientific experiments.

"It will totally destroy the nature of the experiment," he said. "And that is not forbidden by the penal code".