"Jacques Le Worm Chirac must have found it difficult to write his grovelling apology to the Queen," said the tabloid The Sun, continuing its campaign of insults against the French leader over his refusal to support the invasion of Iraq.

"What nauseating hypocrisy from a man who's master at it. Chirac's just trying to squirm his way back into our good books so he can cut a post-war deal over oil-rich Iraq," the paper said.

In a letter sent to the queen and made public by his office on Thursday, Chirac apologised over the daubing by vandals of anti-British and anti-US graffiti at the Etaples war cemetery in northern France.

The right-wing Daily Mail also doubted Chirac's sincerity, in particular when he wrote to the queen that, "at this moment when your soldiers are engaged in combat the thoughts of the French turn naturally towards them."

"Really?," asked said the paper. "Can this be the same Chirac who exploited anti-British and anti-American sentiment at every turn? Who threatened to keep Eastern European countries out of the EU for backing war against Saddam? And whose foreign minister couldn't bring himself to say he wanted the Allies to win?"

Like The Sun, The Daily Mail said there was a "simple explanation. Allied forces are at the gates of Baghdad. President Bush won't speak to him. French companies fear losing lucrative contracts. Suddenly, his posturing doesn't seem so clever after all".

The conservative broadsheet The Daily Telegraph carried an editorial entitled "Who's sorry now?" on Chirac's letter.

"The decision to send the letter and the unambiguous wording of the condemnation are admirable.

But how much easier it is to sympathize, now that war has begun, than it was to provide support when it mattered, in the diplomatic build-up to the conflict," it said.

The centre-left Independent, which has consistently opposed the US-led war on Iraq, commented that in making a conciliatory gesture the "apologetic Chirac seeks to repair rift with UK".

The Etaples cemetery, on the northern French coast, contains the graves of around 11,000 British servicemen from World War I.

A week ago unknown vandals defaced the cemetery's main monument, painting a swastika and several insults including the words "Dig up your garbage. It is fouling our soil," and "Rosbeefs (British) go home -- Saddam will win and make your blood flow." The words were removed within hours.

Relations between France and Britain have reached a historic low as a result of Britain's decision to take part in the US-led invasion of Iraq, which France has condemned.

The mass circulation paper The Sun, owned by the US-Australian press magnate Rupert Murdoch, has vilified Chirac, to the extent of producing two limited-edition copies of its front pages in French for distribution in Paris, describing the French leader as a "worm" and comparing him to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

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