PARIS: Maverick French Socialist Segolene Royal has hinted she would run for president again in 2012, appealing for support in an Internet video posted just after she lost a bitter party leadership contest.

After losing out to Martine Aubry as Socialist leader, Royal made her clearest comment to date on her ambition to take on President Nicolas Sarkozy for a second time, in a message to her supporters posted on YouTube late on Tuesday.

"I need you, I need your ideas because 2012 is soon, it's tomorrow, it's in three years and we need to start working on it now. See you soon!" a smiling Royal enthused in the video message recorded in her Paris office.

"I'm fighting on, more than ever. You can count on me, I'm going to be fully committed and the way things have turned out, I'm going to have the time," she said with a chuckle, referring to her failed bid to be first secretary of the Socialists.

Her use of the Internet, emulating U.S. President-elect Barack Obama who used the web extensively during his campaign, was typical of Royal's presentation of herself as a force for change and modernity.

Royal lost heavily to Sarkozy in last year's presidential race and the Socialists have lurched from crisis to crisis ever since, culminating in a vicious and messy leadership race that ended on Tuesday in defeat for Royal.

The party's governing body confirmed she lost to Aubry in last week's leadership ballot -- by just 102 votes out of 134,800 cast -- ending four days of chaos during which Royal's and Aubry's camps accused one another of vote rigging.

"GOOD LUCK"

The debacle marked a new low after months of infighting that obsessed the Socialists to the point that they allowed Sarkozy, almost unopposed, to launch an ambitious reform programme at home and boost his international profile.

Royal's video (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=FLNXcYxJQXE) will make ominous viewing for Aubry, who takes the helm of a deeply divided party in the knowledge that half of the grassroots members voted against her.

A former minister best known as the author of the 35-hour working week law -- which Sarkozy has been eroding since he became president -- Aubry spent years in the political wilderness after losing a parliamentary election in 2002.

Her comeback was made possible by the support of an unlikely coalition of ageing party bigwigs, known in France as the Socialist "elephants", who have feuded bitterly in the past but united behind Aubry in their desperation to block Royal.

Ever since her surprise victory in the 2006 Socialist primaries to pick a candidate to run against Sarkozy, the glamourous Royal has polarised party leadership and its base.

Her opponents say she is all style and no substance.

Her supporters, many of whom are tired of the elephants and their rhetoric, say Royal is media-savvy, charismatic and capable of breathing new life into a once-formidable party that has not won a presidential election since 1988.

She could still cause untold headaches for Aubry. The left-wing daily Liberation summed up the enormity of the task facing the new leader with a front-page headline: "Good luck..."