PARIS, France - French President Nicolas Sarkozy dismissed allegations of nepotism over his son's likely appointment as head of one of France's biggest urban development agencies, saying the 23-year-old had every right to stand for the post.

In a newspaper interview released on Thursday, Sarkozy accused critics of "bad faith and malice" and added that the attacks were in reality aimed at himself.

"Who is being targeted in this whole controversy? It's not my son, it's me," he said in the interview, due to appear in Friday's edition of the conservative newspaper Le Figaro.

France was taken aback last week by news that Jean Sarkozy, a second-year law student and regional councillor, was in line to take over as president of the agency that oversees La Defense, the Paris business district that wants to rival the City of London as a financial centre.

The news was greeted with outrage by the French media and leftwing opposition, which say Jean Sarkozy is unqualified and is being promoted because of his family name.

His rise has caused unease even inside Sarkozy's own ruling centre-right camp.

The opposition has accused the president of behaving like an "elected monarch" and pressure has been growing for Sarkozy junior to pull out, but his father appeared determined not to back down.

"Is there an age at which you become competent?" Sarkozy asked. "I want our political elites, which have got very old, to be rejuvenated."

Jean Sarkozy entered politics last year, winning election as a councillor in the wealthy Hauts-de-Seine departement, the region where his father cut his political teeth.

He promptly became head of the ruling centre-right majority, although he had not yet finished his undergraduate law degree, and has strengthened his grip on the local party machine.

He is now standing for election as president of EPAD, the agency behind La Defense, a skyscraper-filled zone of banks and corporate headquarters, and is almost certain to be voted in by the board of councillors and state representatives.

His father used to run the EPAD agency before his election as president.

"There is an election, so it's not nepotism," Sarkozy said.

Sarkozy brushed aside suggestions the issue was worrying many in the centre right, saying he enjoyed more support halfway through his five-year mandate than any of his predecessors since the creation of the Fifth Republic in 1958.