Brigitte Bardot praises Putin for hunting ban

Brigitte Bardot, the French sex symbol turned animal rights campaigner, praised Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the "president of my heart" Thursday after he banned the hunting of young seals.

"I really want to thank you and congratulate you for your willingness to denounce the hunting of young seals that you rightly call a bloody practice," Bardot wrote in a letter to Putin, a copy of which was obtained by AFP.

The letter was sent one day after Russia's government banned the hunting of harp seals under one year of age, following comments last month in which Putin denounced such hunts as a "bloody practice."

Bardot -- an actress who won renown as a cinema sex symbol from the 1950s to the 1970s, then later became an outspoken animal rights activist -- said she had long supported such a ban.

"Mr Prime Minister, you who remain the president of my heart, I want to thank you very sincerely for hearing my call," she wrote.

Although Putin is better known in the West for pushing a muscular foreign policy, the president-turned-prime minister has occasionally shown compassion for wildlife and nature.

In 2006 he decided to re-route a controversial oil pipeline around Siberia's Lake Baikal, winning praise from environmental groups, and last October he was shown on television cuddling a tiger cub he had received as a birthday gift.