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The 77-year-old, whose presidency of France ran from 1995 until 2007, could face a ten-year prison sentence and 150,000-euro (£130,000) fine if found guilty. He will be the first modern French leader to face a corruption trial. Mr Chirac faces charges of abuse of public funds while he was mayor of Paris. It is alleged that he paid 21 allies for doing non-existent jobs as part of his drive for power in the 1990s. Last month, the Socialist mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, agreed to drop the town hall's civil lawsuit against Mr Chirac in exchange for 2.2 million euros...

Judges could come knocking over at least five cases involving suspected corruption and alleged financial misdeeds, most dating to Chirac's time as Paris mayor from 1977 to 1995 — the year he became president. It's unlikely that Chirac, 74, would ever go to jail, but the cases loom as a humiliating coda to his four-decade political career. Since the Fifth Republic was founded in 1958, a former head of state has never been required to answer allegations of wrongdoing from earlier in his career.

PARIS, Jan. 31 — President Jacques Chirac has demanded that the United States sign both the Kyoto climate protocol and a future agreement that will take effect when the Kyoto accord runs out in 2012. He said that he welcomed last week’s State of the Union address in which President Bush described climate change as a “serious challenge” and acknowledged that a growing number of American politicians now favor emissions cuts. But he warned that if the United States did not sign the agreements, a carbon tax across Europe on imports from nations that have not signed the Kyoto treaty...

PARIS - Al-Qaida has for the first time announced a union with an Algerian insurgent group that has designated France as an enemy, saying they will act together against French and American interests.

Jacques Chirac, French president, on Thursday night stormed out of a European Union summit after a French industrialist began addressing leaders of the bloc in English. Mr Chirac and two senior ministers walked out in protest at the decision of Ernest-Antoine Seillière, head of the Unice employers organisation, to make a plea for economic reform in “the language of business”.

FRANCE yesterday ordered a ban on public meetings likely to provoke disturbances as thousands of police were deployed on the streets of Paris to stop youths turning the tourist centre into a battlefield. The initiative came as speculation mounted over a severely discredited Jacques Chirac’s ability to endure the last 17 months of his presidential term. Ringleaders of the riots that have shaken France for the past two weeks were suspected of planning to set ablaze the affluent Champs Elysées. Through text and internet messages they were encouraging followers armed with Molotov cocktails to converge on the tree-lined tourist haunt...

In 1960, during a joint press conference with then French President Charles De Gaulle, David Ben Gurion, Israel’s then prime minister stated that France was Israel's greatest friend. At that moment, De Gaulle interrupted him abruptly, asserting that "France has no friends, just interests." This statement summarizes much of French foreign policy. It certainly applies to the French relationship with Hizbullah. Indeed, there has been a noticeable recent change in France’s attitudes vis-à-vis Hizbullah to such an extent that France’s stance on the Lebanese Shia organization now seems almost identical to the American one. Nonetheless, it remains to be seen whether France and...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Oil companies, including one that employed an Iraq weapons supplier, paid hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks to Saddam Hussein during the U.N. oil-for-food program, a U.N. report said on Thursday. Saddam Hussein's government took in $228.8 million (128.3 million pounds) from surcharges in connection with oil contracts, the report said. That was nearly 13 percent of the $1.8 billion in surcharges Iraq received from more than 2,200 foreign companies during the oil-for-food humanitarian program of 1996 to 2003, the report charged. Intricate webs of companies, individuals, and governments stretching from Europe to Asia...

TEHRAN - In a meeting with President Mahmud Ahmadinejad in Tehran on Tuesday, French Ambassador Bernard Poletti said his country is ready to cooperate with Iran in the production of nuclear electricity. France is aware of Iran's concerns and its demand to access to nuclear technology for the production of nuclear electricity and is prepared to cooperate in this regard, he added. The French ambassador to Tehran also presented a letter from Jacques Chirac to the Iranian president and expressed hope that he would be able to play a constructive role in the promotion of ties between the two countries...

With just one-fifth the population of the United States, France boasts the world's second largest contingent of diplomats, and its consulates and embassies number just eight fewer than the State Department's 260.[1] The French investment in its foreign ministry is likewise heavy and demonstrates the importance the French government places on French prestige and grandeur. Under President Jacques Chirac, French foreign policy has become increasingly assertive. Francois Heisbourg, director of the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique (Foundation for Strategic Research), summed up French foreign policy as "oppose just to exist."[2]  Such descriptions are not entirely fair, though. While Chirac inherited a French foreign...

PARIS, Oct 12 (Reuters) - A former French ambassador to the United Nations appeared before a judge on Wednesday in connection with an inquiry into corruption linked to the U.N.-run oil-for-food programme in Iraq, a judicial source said. Jean-Bernard Merimee, detained on Monday over allegations that he may have benefited from oil allocated under the programme by former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, could face charges of corruption and corruption of foreign public servants. He is one of almost a dozen French political, diplomatic and other personalities whom judge Philippe Courroye has questioned or wants to question over the oil-for-food programme....

PARIS – Karen Hughes should be French - it would make her job easier. As the US undersecretary of State for public diplomacy returns home from her first foreign trip burnishing America's image in the world, she might feel a touch of envy at the glowing international reputation that France enjoys, highlighted in a recent study by the Project on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA). In the survey of people in 23 countries across the globe, a majority or plurality in 20 described France as exerting a positive influence on world affairs. The US, by comparison, is seen as having a...

Barely noticed, Germany has overtaken America to become the world's biggest single exporter, shipping the hardware that powers the rising economies of Asia and eastern Europe. Its trade surplus is now greater than that of China, Japan and India combined, reaching a staggering 16.8 billion euros in June alone. The profits made by German companies are running at over 33 per cent of national income, the highest in 40 years. Eyeing a bargain, the world's canniest are already piling into German assets for the great Teutonic rebound. George Soros and fellow hedge funders are snapping up distressed banks. Britain's Terra...

PARIS, Sept. 1 (Xinhuanet) -- French Foreign Ministry announced Thursday that France is to send aid and troops to US Gulf coast area hit by Hurricane Katrina, one of the most devastating storms in the country's history. "Our operational humanitarian aid group is going to meet to study the civilian and military means that France could make available from French regions and the French West Indies," said French Foreign Ministry's spokesman, Denis Simmoneau. "From our crisis unit, which is going to Baton Rouge from Lafayette, we are following the situation of the French people we know about," said the spokesman....

PARIS (Reuters) - French President Jacques Chirac urged Iran on Monday to re-examine the European Union's offer of incentives in return for a suspension of sensitive nuclear work. "I invite the Iranian authorities to make the choice of cooperation and trust by genuinely looking at this offer and by reverting to their commitments to suspend activities linked to the production of fissile materials," Chirac said in a speech. Iran rejected the offer earlier this month and resumed some nuclear work in breach of a promise to freeze such activities while talks lasted, prompting the EU trio of Britain, France and...

Never underestimate a revolutionary regime. In particular, never underestimate the durability of the revolutionaries' fervour to fight for their cause. The French revolution began in 1789, but it was only after two decades of war that the fight was finally knocked out of the revolution's heirs, and repeatedly - in 1830, 1848 and 1870 - they threatened to make a comeback. The Russian revolution began in 1917, but the Soviet Union posed a mortal threat until the mid-1980s. As for the Chinese revolution of 1949, it was only last month that the regime in Beijing was threatening to go nuclear...

BIARRITZ, France (AFX) - 'It is still possible to negotiate' with Iran regarding its nuclear activities, French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said, as the UN's IAEA began an emergency meeting in Vienna to discuss Tehran's resumption of uranium conversion. 'We are still holding out our hand,' Douste-Blazy told journalists. He pointed out that the issue is before the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and said that 'it's not for today' that the UN Security Council will be asked to take action. Europe has warned the matter may eventually be taken to the Security Council with a demand for sanctions against...

PARIS, Aug. 8 (UPI) -- French Foreign Minister Philippe Dousle-Blazy says Iran's nuclear program is a violation of international agreements. He called the Iranian program "a clear violation of the Paris agreement and the International Atomic Energy Agency resolutions." Iran began converting uranium at its Eshafan conversion facility Monday after negotiations with France, Germany and Britain on incentives for Iran to suspend its nuclear program disintegrated over the weekend. Dousle-Blazy said, "Iran never was able to explain the need to proceed with uranium conversion and enrichment when there is no reactor to generate electricity." He also said Iran had not...

Europe is in crisis. It is depopulating because of birthrates well below replacement. Weighted down by oppressive taxes and onerous regulations, the economies of the major European nations are barely growing. Pessimism reigns. Yet there are the little flickers of light in the form of bright and energetic young people pushing constructive change, and increasing public recognition from some European leaders that the present course is unsustainable. In times of crisis, some nations find a Ronald Reagan, a Winston Churchill or a Margaret Thatcher. If one looks closely at the increasing political divisions in France, Germany and Italy, it is...

The Iranian government is to contact the Iraqi tribunal prosecuting Saddam Hussein to seek justice for the Iranian victims of Iraqi chemical weapons attacks which contaminated up to 100,000 people. Tehran promised last week to present a dossier to the tribunal documenting Saddam's use of poison gas in the 1980-88 war with Iran. So far, the only charges Saddam will face are those relating to crimes inside Iraq and during the 1990-91 occupation of Kuwait. Western countries offered Saddam tacit support during his war with Iran, refusing to blame Iraq for its invasion and the subsequent use of poison gas....

French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has vowed to deport any Muslim cleric preaching violence. Speaking after meeting his Spanish counterpart in Madrid, Mr Sarkozy said he would seek the expulsion of imams in France "whose sermons are radical". Mr Sarkozy said France and Spain had agreed tougher joint measures against Islamic militancy. Two days ago, France reimposed border controls with its EU neighbours following the London bombings. Call for unity After meeting Spanish Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso, Mr Sarkozy told reporters radical preaching would no longer be tolerated in France. "The [French] republic is not a weak regime and...

It's fitting that France was chosen last week as the site for an experimental nuclear fusion reactor being built by an international consortium.... No country gets a larger share of its total electricity from nuclear power than France at 78%. Perhaps more amazing, France consumes less than 4% of the world's energy but produces about a sixth of its nuclear power. Because the groundwork for this nuclear proficiency was laid in decades past, France deserves to be at the center of the attempt to take the next big step forward, fusion.... Most puzzling is that much of the opposition to...

French President Jacques Chirac is reported to have cracked jokes about British food at a meeting with the German and Russian leaders. French newspaper Liberation says Gerhard Schroeder and Vladimir Putin laughed and joined in the banter. "One cannot trust people whose cuisine is so bad," it quotes Mr Chirac as saying, within earshot of reporters. A French government spokesman declined to comment on the report, which comes days before the G8 summit in Scotland. The only thing they (the English) have ever done for European agriculture is mad cow disease Jacques Chirac The three men met on Sunday for...

...At a time of deep national unease, his appointment is President Chirac's Hail Mary pass, a final, desperate heave to salvage a fast evaporating mandate.... At the foreign ministry, he traveled relentlessly and became notorious for his tirades against his staff, calling them "fools," "nothings" and "incompetents." European diplomats were frustrated by his indifference to Brussels and could only watch as he took on hairier problems like the disintegrating Ivory Coast, where he felt France could make a difference. While Mr. Chirac merely spoke of France being a genuine counterweight to American power, it was Mr. de Villepin who tried...

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The European Union was in disarray on Thursday after the Netherlands followed France in resoundingly rejecting the bloc's new constitution, possibly stalling future expansion and disrupting decision making. The rejection of the charter by two of the six countries that founded the bloc in the 1950s could deal a fatal blow to a treaty designed to make the EU run more smoothly following its enlargement from 15 to 25 states last year. The votes also cast doubt on the EU's hopes for a stronger foreign policy and its plans to expand further to the western Balkans, Turkey...

...French voters said "Non" to the hundreds of pages of a European constitution.... The irony is that a vast majority of Frenchmen openly admit to never having read, let alone studied, the constitution. So the fact that France was a founding member of the EU, half a century ago, and that a Frenchman, Monsieur Giscard d'Estaing, presided over the constitutional conference, was the only likely motive for a "Oui.".... The "Non" is embarrassing because it expresses the heartfelt wish of the National Front, the Communists and the radical chic. But even so, the French, like the Germans, feel threatened in...

JACK Straw's face said it all. The Foreign Secretary had expected France to reject the European Union constitution - but its "Non" was fundamental. This was not just a rebuttal of the treaty, but of Britain's vision of Europe. The scenes of celebration chilled British policymakers. The economic reform that the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, has been preaching to Europe for years was being denounced in the streets as "ultra-liberalism" and capitalism run wild. Some of the No celebrations looked like the 1968 student protests: red flags were being flown to hail a victory of workers and students. This is...

A senior French politician said on Friday he had been implicated in an oil-for-food scam in Iraq in an effort to discredit President Jacques Chirac, a fierce opponent of the US-led war in Iraq. A US Senate report on Thursday said Senator Charles Pasqua - once a close Chirac associate and former interior minister in a conservative government - had received an allocation of 11 million barrels of oil with the personal approval of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The oil-for-food programme was dogged by allegations of massive fraud and charges Saddam used it to buy influence in the West....

Thursday, the French Senate — the one in France, which is that uppity country in Europe — was interrupted by a man who came to debate with no clothes on. ... Here's what it is and I quote from a note FOX News' Eric Shawn sent to all of us Thursday ...: "The House Energy and Commerce Committee will reveal that the Iraqi intelligence service tried to target French politicians, including the possibility of supporting a French presidential candidate so they would support Saddam (search) and end sanctions. Memos show the Iraqis were promised by the spokesman for Chirac's campaign...

By Joan Veon May 3, 2005 NewsWithViews.com At the spring meeting of the IMF/World Bank in Washington, D. C. it was announced that a number of countries will be used to test a $1 tax on airline tickets. This global tax idea has been around for the last twenty years and is now back as a tax that would be relatively easy to put in place. Furthermore, an “International Financing Facility” for immunization will also be set up on a test basis. How could we be this far? For the last ten years I have followed the topic of global...

VIENNA, April 13 (Reuters) - French President Jacques Chirac has been pushing the EU to drop its refusal to consider letting Iran enrich uranium, despite U.S. and European fears Iran could use enrichment technology for weapons, EU diplomats say. Sharing U.S. suspicions that Iran may have atom bomb ambitions, the European Union's three biggest powers -- France, Britain and Germany -- have demanded Iran give up its nuclear fuel programme in exchange for economic and political benefits. Iran says it has no interest in the bomb and wants nuclear power plants to meet booming demand for electricity. Tehran has frozen...

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami is on a well-publicized tour to France, trying to convince the world that a deal with the European Union will permit the mullahs to retain their nuclear program, simply for a promise not to develop nuclear weapons. Photo opportunities with French President Jacques Chiraq show handshakes and smiling faces. Khatami in his black turban, expensive mullah robes, with his precisely trimmed beard and neat thin-rim eyeglasses looked quite the respectable diplomat, ready to address UNESCO, to be followed by a diplomatic stop-off in Rome to attend the pope's funeral. Iran flooded the news wires with optimistic...

A spectre is haunting Europe - and terrifying the President of France. Jacques Chirac last week pointed the finger: "Ultra-liberalism," he warned, "is the communism of our age." By "ultra-liberalism" Mr Chirac means the sort of market economics that has made America the world's strongest economy, rescued Britain from 40 years of decline and brought prosperity to countries ranging from New Zealand to Singapore. The fact that the leader of the French centre-Right can equate this with communism is a sad illustration of how France is stuck in the political dark ages.Mr Chirac is in a panic because the barbarians...

LONDON (AFP) - The tabloid Press savaged French President Jacques Chirac, accusing him of breaking commitments to liberalise the European Union and of betraying Britain over its jealously-held EU budget rebate. "You'd have thought (Prime Minister) Tony Blair would have learned by now that Jacques Chirac is not a man to be trusted," The Sun said in an editorial following the end of EU summit talks. In Brussels, Chirac condemned Britain's long-cherished EU budget rebate on Wednesday as "no longer justified," after EU leaders agreed in effect to put on hold measures to liberalise Europe's vast services sector. The measures...

US President George W. Bush has resisted calls from some quarters in Europe for a forum other than NATO to discuss transatlantic relations. Speaking in Brussels on Tuesday evening (22 February) as the EU-specific part of his trip drew to a close, Mr Bush said, referring to the EU and NATO, "I think they're both important, they're both a part of an important dialogue with Europe". Following a NATO meeting earlier in the day; Mr Bush said the Alliance is the "cornerstone of the transatlantic relationship". "In order for NATO to be vital it's got to be relevant, and if...

PARIS, Feb 15 (AFP) - The assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri was a deliberate blow to France, whose president Jacques Chirac was a personal friend and has sponsored UN moves to end the Syrian occupation, Paris-based commentators said Tuesday. While the French government refused to point a finger of blame -- adhering publicly to Chirac's call for an international investigation into the murder -- analysts and Middle East specialists were less circumspect about who they thought was behind it. "I have not the shadow of a doubt that Syria is responsible," said Antoine Basbous, president of the...

News came today that the Europeans are waking and discovering — mon dieu — that Al Qaeda is in their midst. And — even worse — the pervasive anti-Americanism of Western Europe seems to have acted as a recruiting machine for young Muslims in Europe to go to Iraq to kill Americans.

Un:Deux:

French President Jacques Chirac continued a fence-mending but at times edgy state visit to Britain Friday reaffirming that the U.N. should decide on foreign interventions. "It's not for any given country to consider that a situation is open to stepping in and interfering," he told a question-and-answer session with students at Oxford University, according to the UK's Press Association. "It's up to the international community to do so and particularly the U.N., which alone has the authority to interfere," he said in remarks apparently aimed at the United States. The French president -- who backed a U.N. solution over...

WASHINGTON, Nov 19 (Reuters) - The No. 2 American diplomat suggested on Friday French President Jacques Chirac wanted the United States to fail in Iraq, in a sign the two countries were far from healing their rift due to the war. "I think he's fearful that we'll be successful," Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said in an interview with the Arab-language television network Al Jazeera. "Since he's made the decision not to be involved in Iraq, maybe he thinks that we won't be successful." Last week, Chirac, who was the fiercest critic of the invasion among traditional U.S. allies,...

French President Chirac on eve of state visit to London accuses U.S. and UK of making world more dangerous (Reuters)

PARIS (AFP) - Microsoft chairman Bill Gates will meet with French President Jacques Chirac here Wednesday during a visit to France to defend his company's software against competition from Linux and other free Internet-based software. Gates will also sign a cooperation deal with Dassault Systemes, the French maker of software for designing and operating industrial products in the French capital, the two companies said. The chairman and founder of the world's leading software maker will begin the day by addressing a conference on electronic administration where more than a hundred public decision-makers of the national and local governments, the Social...

JACQUES CHIRAC dealt a blow to Tony Blair’s attempt to heal the wounds between the US and Europe last night by saying that the Prime Minister had won nothing for supporting the war against Iraq. As Mr Blair used a keynote speech to present Britain as a “bridge across the Atlantic”, President Chirac doubted whether anyone could play the “honest broker”. Speaking before he visits London on Thursday, he said that it was not in the nature of this Administration to return favours. Mr Blair suffered another setback when Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State and the administration figure...

Something is rotten in the French Republic's diplomacy. On Friday, November 5, President Jacques Chirac hurried to the Arabian Peninsula to offer his condolences to the new president of the United Arab Emirates after his father's passing. Under this pretense, Chirac was absent when Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi went to Brussels to meet with the European Union members to discuss the future of Iraq. One is stunned by Chirac's priorities when it comes to international issues. Chirac's dangerous liaisons with dictators have created a hidden diplomatic principle: preserving the stability of dictatorship rather than promoting democracy. "Betrayal" is the...

The French president has decided to leave an EU summit just before a meeting with interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. Mr Allawi is due to join EU leaders as guest of honour at the summit lunch in Brussels. But Jacques Chirac, an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq, says he has prior engagements and will not attend. Correspondents say the move is seen as a clear snub to Mr Allawi who has called for broader involvement in Iraq. Mr Allawi has urged "spectator countries" to become actively involved in the reconstruction of Iraq. The EU leaders are expected...

GEORGE Bush yesterday offered an olive branch to hostile European leaders — but was snubbed by the French President. Referring to divisions over the Iraq war, the re-elected US leader said: “Whatever our past disagreements, we share a common enemy. I will continue to reach out to our partners in the EU.” Mr Bush also said he will use his new muscle to defeat terrorism. He said: “I earned political capital in the election and I intend to spend it.” But French President Jacques Chirac — dubbed Le Worm — was doing his best to scupper bridge-building. He will snub...

Frédéric Desagneaux, consul general of France for San Francisco, is not happy with the light being shown on his country’s involvement with U.N. corruption in Iraq. Poor thing. Yesterday, the independent committee investigating corruption in the U.N.’s “oil-for-food” program for Iraq made public the names of 3,545 companies that sold goods to Saddam. Also published were the names of 248 companies which received Iraqi oil under the program. Through oil-for-food, Saddam stole “$10.1 billion through oil smuggling and kickbacks from suppliers.” Leave it to the U.N. to pull off one of the biggest scandals in world history. Evidence is emerging...

Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2004U.S. Bugs 'Jackass' Chirac's Phone, Book ClaimsThe United States listens in on the phone calls of French President Jacques Chirac and his underlings, a new book alleges. French journalists Henri Vernet and Thomas Cantaloube write in "Chirac contre Bush - l'autre guerre" ("Chirac versus Bush - the other war") that "several military and intelligence sources told them of the American surveillance, which is relatively simple because M Chirac, a compulsive user of mobile and landline phones, rarely uses secure, encrypted lines," the London Times reported today. The Times offered this sorry bit of non-evidence: "The Americans indirectly...

Immediately after Malbrunot and Chesnot were abducted, President Jacques Chirac launched an intense effort to secure their freedom. At the same time, he saw a chance not only of circumventing the US authorities in Baghdad, but torpedoing a potential Washington-Damascus rapprochement over joint military border action. To this end he took three steps: 1. He formed a special panel at the Elysee Palace of French intelligence officers and diplomatic advisers with good connections in Arab countries, such as the former UN secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who is well remembered in Washington for his contribution to the 1993 American military debacle...

THE US-led war that ousted Saddam Hussein opened a Pandora's box and the situation in Iraq was not getting any better, French President Jacques Chirac said today. "I think that one way or another we have opened a Pandora's box in Iraq that (we) are unable to close," he said after a Madrid summit with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. "The situation (in Iraq) is very serious and is not getting better. "None of us intend to change position." Mr Chirac and Mr Schroeder were staunch opponents of the war. Mr Zapatero's rightwing...