Steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal meets President Francois Hollande on ArcelorMittal dispute

Hollande was to meet Mittal at 1700 GMT after Hollande's outspoken Industrial Renewal Minister Arnaud Montebourg threatened to nationalise the company's Florange plant, and said the group was no longer welcome in the country, although he backtracked on this outburst.

The French president has so far not publicly spoken on the issue.

The fate of the site has become a litmus test of the Socialist president's strategy to rescue the struggling economy, improve competitiveness and create jobs.

Mittal, who ranks 21 on the Forbes list of the world's richest people, is engaged in a fight with French ministers over the future of the site in the traditional, but declining, heartland of France's steel industry in the eastern Lorraine region.

ArcelorMittal has said that two blast furnaces at Florange, which were damped down for 14 months prior to their full closure, were uncompetitive in a tough trading climate, partly because they are too far from ports for transportation.

France has until Saturday to find a buyer for them. It says it has two offers, but only for the entire Florange site including other facilities which Mittal wants to retain and keep operating.

Mittal has refused to sell the full operation and warned that nationalisation of the Florange facilities would threaten the viability of all of its activities across France, where it employs 20,000 people.

Montebourg, who is suggesting

... contd.