Those mayoral years may return to haunt Citizen Chirac after June 16 when his presidential immunity lapses.
Investigators want to tie up loose ends in cases arising from illegal funding of his Gaullist Rassemblement pour la République (RPR) party when he was its chief. More than a dozen of his subordinates have received suspended sentences.
Sarkozy is denying that a deal might have been done to extend Chirac's immunity.
Still, lâescroc does not intend to remain idle. Like so many other past leaders he is setting up a Foundation, himself for the use of, in order âto help to shape global policy on development and climate changeâ.Mr Chirac, who is succeeded tomorrow by Nicolas Sarkozy, wants to use his five decades of political experience, his passion for nonEuropean civilisations and his more recent conversion to the environment, said Michel Camdessus, 74, the new foundationâs president. âJacques Chirac has deep convictions,â he told Le Monde. âA locomotive like Chirac will get things moving.âQuite so. We have already seen how successful his convictions and, indeed, his policies have been, particularly in Africa and the Middle East, not to mention in Europe where he managed to antagonize most countries and his obsessive struggle against the United States.
He will be remembered as the first French leader to recognize the country's crimes against Jews in World War II and to commemorate formally the complicity in African slavery."Whereas Sarkozy, according to the article, refuses to apologize for anything. Maybe, as the son of a Hungarian immigrant and the grandson of a Bulgarian Jewish one, he does not think it appropriate. In any case, apologies for misdemeanours of the long-gone past is extremely easy.
Apologizing for the past, however, does not mean knowing how to apply its hard learned lessons to present circumstances. In this respect Chirac was a dismal failure. He kowtowed to the Hitler wannabes of our time such as Saddam Hussein. Indeed, Chirac ran interference for Saddam at the United Nations at every turn.Plenty more of the same. In fact, it is fair to argue that President Chirac's behaviour reassured Saddam that he was immune from attack and virtually made any alternative solution to the crisis impossible.
The two men's friendship went way back to the 1970's, when Chirac (who was then French Prime Minister) had helped arrange France's assistance in building a nuclear reactor in Iraq. Chirac, who vehemently condemned Israel for destroying the reactor in 1981, was so cozy with the Iraq dictatorship that his unofficial media title at the time was "Sheikh Iraq."
Indeed, France under Chirac's leadership continued to provide assistance to Iraq during the period of economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council. By 2001, France had become Iraq's largest European trading partner and had controlled over 22.5% of Iraq's imports, which included arms imports.
A report commissioned by the French parliament published in September 2002 put the value of French exports to Iraq since sanctions were imposed at $3.5 billion. Just prior to the start of the Iraq war in 2003, France's huge oil company and a large contributor to Chirac's political party -- Total Fina Elf -- was poised to win contracts to drill large unexploited oil reserves in Iraq which would have been jeopardized by Saddam's overthrow.
Chirac did not act out of any moral conviction in opposing the United States at the Security Council when we sought a follow-up resolution authorizing military action to enforce all of the Security Council's prior resolutions ignored by Saddam. Chirac put the narrow business interests of his own political benefactors before any concern about the potential dangers posed by Saddam Hussein's regime to international peace and security.