The French interior minister has ordered police in western France to take action against a mayor and lawmaker who allegedly told a group of itinerant Roma, parked illegally near his town, that Hitler had not killed enough of them.

Gilles Bourdouleix of the UDI centrist party was recorded by a local newspaper reporter making the comment during an altercation with the group, which had parked more than 100 camping cars on a field near Cholet without a permit.

His remarks were reported as President Francois Hollande moves to defuse growing anger over illegal Roma camps from conservatives and frustrated taxpayers, who, in a time of austerity, feel that social services provided by the state are being abused.

The mayor told a television channel that his comments had been distorted. He was not immediately available for comment to Reuters.

�I mumbled something like, �if it was Hitler he would have killed them here�, meaning, �thank goodness I�m not Hitler and so there�s no reason to call me Hitler,� he told BFM news TV. �This is shameful score-settling which aims to smear me.�

Last week, Hollande�s Socialist Party proposed a law making it easier to evict such groups, amid worries that the issue could prove damaging to his unpopular government in municipal elections one year from now.

�This is not a slip of the tongue,� Interior Minister Manuel Valls told news channel i>Tele TV.

�A case has been brought before the courts because this is praise for the crimes of World War Two, it�s praise for Nazis, and coming from a mayor it�s unbearable,� he said.

At Valls�s request, a police prefect in western France filed a complaint with a state prosecutor, accusing Bourdouleix of �praising crimes against humanity�, police said.

The prosecutor was not immediately available for comment. A person found guilty of praising crimes against humanity can face up to 45,000 euros in fines, a year in jail, or both.

France numbers about 250,000-300,000 itinerant Roma, mostly French citizens. They have a special status that allows them by law to temporarily park their mobile homes in designated open-air areas with power and water hook-ups during the summer.

But reports of them parking elsewhere – sometimes on municipal sports fields – has angered many.

Earlier this month, the center-right mayor of the southern city of Nice expelled one group from a sports field, vowing to �crush� the �delinquents�, and urged other mayors to revolt against what he called leniency by the Socialists.

The head of the UDI, Jean-Louis Borloo, has said he would seek to exclude Bourdouleix at the next meeting of the party�s executive committee, according to media reports.

Under Hitler�s rule, Nazi Germany attempted to exterminate the Roma people of Europe. Estimates of how many were killed in Nazi concentration camps range from 220,000 to 1,500,000.

(Reuters)