Her victory over two male rivals from the party's elite avoided the need for a runoff vote, and gave her -- and her long-struggling opposition party -- a running start in the tough campaign for presidential elections in April.

"All the Socialists have won," party leader Francois Hollande, who is also Royal's partner, said Friday.

"Now the Socialists have a candidate and ... we must win against the right," Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who came in second behind Royal in Thursday's three-way-race, said Friday on RTL radio.

The vote also elevated Royal from a poll darling accused of lacking political gravitas to a presidential candidate -- and brought her closer than any woman in history to France's top job.

The Socialists are rife with divisions that stained the unprecedented American-style campaign leading up to the "primary" vote Thursday. But her solid victory suggested that the party is ready to put differences aside to fight the right -- and its front-runner, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.

"She's the only one who can really unify the left, and the only one who could beat Sarkozy, the right, and the extreme right," said Florian Liscouet, a 19-year-old student voting in Paris.

Royal now faces a formidable challenge.

"She was on the training ground, and now she enters the big stadium," former Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, a member of the ruling conservative party UMP, said on Europe-1 radio Friday. He cast doubt on her abilities to withstand the fight.

Royal angered many in her party by appealing directly to voters and distancing herself from Socialist party line. She cast doubt on the 35-hour workweek, a landmark Socialist policy, and suggested military training for troubled youth.

"She represents a breath of fresh air for the French. She's really listening to them and their problems," Liscouet said, echoing sentiments of many Royal followers who say her attitude more than her policies won them over.

The success of Royal's tactics suggests that the French Socialists are the latest to shift away from Europe's traditional leftist roots, following Britain's Labour Party transformation under Tony Blair and Italian Premier Romano Prodi's move toward the center.

The Socialists, who dominated the French political scene a generation ago, have been searching for direction since former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's embarrassing third-place finish in the last presidential vote, in 2002.

"There is a will to change politics as it is done today in France," the French Socialist Party's No. 2 official, Francois Rebsamen, said Friday on Europe-1 radio.

He described the Socialists' campaign, which opened up the party's former closed-door decision-making to the public with televised debates and Thursday's well-advertised vote, as "a good lesson in democracy."

Despite Royal's maverick stance, she remains a leftist who wants to punish companies who shift jobs abroad and has suggested obligatory labor union membership. She supports gay marriage and adoption and has never married Hollande, the father of her four children.

Critics say the Socialists have no feasible recipes for facing a globalizing economy. The party manifesto calls for expanding use of the much-maligned 35-hour workweek law and re-nationalizing utility Electricite de France.

Royal has shaken up the political scene in a nation disenchanted and in need of change. Many say a woman president is the tonic needed.

"That would do us some good," said Socialist Philippe Chleq, 72, one of the 68,000 party members who have joined since June, after voting. "There is so much machismo in politics, it's disgusting. She'll help change that."

She won with more than 60% of the vote, avoiding a second round.

The mother-of-four is widely expected to face centre-right hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy in the April poll.

Ms Royal has promoted herself as a political outsider who can shake up a system with which many French people have grown disenchanted.

But BBC Europe editor Mark Mardell says she has so far been decidedly light on policy detail and faces a relentless campaign against Mr Sarkozy.

Speaking to reporters in Poitou-Charente, whose regional council she heads, Ms Royal expressed delight at the result.

"To be chosen in this way is something extraordinary," she said.

"I want to embody this change and make it credible and legitimate.

"I think that tonight this legitimacy has been given to me and for this I want to thank party members from the bottom of my heart."

Race begins

Both rivals, former Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn and ex-Prime Minister Laurent Fabius, conceded saying it was important for the Socialists to forget their differences and focus on the election, which has been set for 22 April.

Mr Sarkozy has not officially announced that he is a candidate.

Recent polls have suggested Ms Royal would stand an even chance of beating Mr Sarkozy in the presidential poll - but her two rivals would not.

The three contenders made bitter attacks on each other during the campaign.

If no candidate had achieved an overall majority of votes, there would have been a second round next week.

But party officials said 60.6% of the party's 220,000 members had plumped for Ms Royal, a former environment minister.

Mr Strauss-Kahn took 20.8% of the vote and Mr Fabius 18.5%.

Ms Royal's rivals tried to destabilise her campaign during the final days on the election trail.

Teachers reacted angrily after a video appeared on the internet last week featuring a party meeting earlier this year in which she said they should work longer hours in school.

Ms Royal responded by highlighting what she described as "chauvinistic comments" made by her rival candidates, something they strongly denied.

But the prime minister, in an e-mail question and answer session, said he wanted to "proceed by consensus".

New anti-terror plans could be brought in before Christmas, he added, saying that police wanted longer detentions.

The proposals, he said, would be "based on an analysis now of what has gone on in the past few months and how we make sure we have the most effective laws to deal with the terrorist threat that we face".

He added: "The issue to do with the number of days of detention will be part of that."

The government's plans to bring in a 90-day limit on detentions were voted down by the Commons last year, with MPs and peers eventually settling on 28 days. Previously, the limit had been 14 days.

Mr Blair said: "I supported 90 days before on the basis that, particularly, the police handling terrorism for us thought that that was what was needed.

"But we have got to look at it again."

Home Secretary John Reid said on Wednesday that the UK faced a "wave" of terrorist plots, prepared strategically and directed from abroad by al-Qaeda.

Although no anti-terror bill was included in the Queen's Speech, pending Mr Reid's review of options, the government promised to "fill gaps" in legislation.

Lord Carlile, the government appointed expert who oversees terrorism laws, said on Wednesday that he expected fresh anti-terror plans to be published in the new year.

He told BBC Two's Newsnight the options included "giving police powers to take fingerprints on fingerprint scanners at airports and seaports".

He added: "The government may also include an attempt to return to 90 days' post-arrest detention.

"If they do that it will, as the home secretary has said, have to be on an evidence base."

Compromise

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair has said an extension should be "examined again in the near future", with Chancellor Gordon Brown adding that he "completely" agreed with this analysis.

However, Conservative leader David Cameron accused ministers of peddling the "politics of fear".

'Internment'

The Tories say there should be an extension of the detention limit only if there is "credible evidence" it is needed.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of the civil rights group Liberty, said: "Ninety days is internment - our nightmare but a terrorist recruiter's dream.

"Why have we seen no moves to allow intercept evidence and other tools to bring terror suspects to justice?"

Last week, MI5 chief Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller said the security service knew of 30 terror plots threatening the UK and is keeping 1,600 individuals under surveillance.

Meanwhile ex-Home Secretary David Blunkett has accepted the public was in danger of having "terror fatigue".

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Thursday that raising awareness to the correct level, without creating panic, was "almost impossible".

Mr Blunkett also accepted that the fact the government's intelligence had turned out to be "wrong" about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction had "undermined confidence in other parts of the counter-terrorism thrust".

"We're not going to keep comparing quantities of strategic forces in nuclear powers as we have been doing for decades, although it still makes some sense," Putin said in televised remarks. "In the modern world, it's the quality of weapons that is more important than the number of nuclear warheads."

He said that along with a strong nuclear deterrent, the military should also preserve efficient conventional forces.

Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said a strong military power was essential for Russia to "protect the nation's security and territorial integrity, firmly defend our national interests and, if necessary, adequately respond to any attempts of political pressure and blackmail," Itar-Tass reported.

In his state-of-the-nation address in May, Putin emphasized that Russia needed a strong military to resist foreign pressure. Windfall oil revenues over recent years have allowed the government to increase weapons purchases and fund the development of new weapons.

"The period of patching holes and elementary survival is over," Putin said Thursday in a reference to a cash shortage that followed the Soviet collapse. "The Army and the Navy are again acquiring power and self-confidence."

Ivanov said that of the military's budget of 820 billion rubles ($30.7 billion) next year, 300 billion rubles would be spent on new weapons, including 17 new intercontinental ballistic missiles. That is a significant increase over recent years, when the military was buying just several new strategic missiles per year. Ivanov added that a state weapons program for 2007 to 2015 envisaged spending the total of 5 trillion rubles ($188 billion) on the development and production of new weapons.

In response to broad criticism of poor conditions and rampant bullying of young conscripts by older soldiers, Ivanov pledged Thursday to punish officers who allowed abuses and open the military to more public scrutiny.

Ivanov said there were 473 noncombat deaths in the military in the first 10 months of the year, compared with 876 during the same period last year. Of that number, 20 deaths resulted from bullying compared with 26 during the same period last year, and 167 were suicides, compared with 206 in 2005, he said.

He said the military this year would disband all construction battalions, notorious for the most vicious bullying and other abuses. He added that three generals were fired this year for assigning to soldiers tasks unrelated to service.