Jacques Chirac, two-term French president who was first leader to acknowledge France's role in the Holocaust and defiantly opposed U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, has died at age 86.
Jacques Chirac, a two-term French president who was the first leader to acknowledge France's role in the Holocaust and defiantly opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, died Thursday at age 86.
With words less grand, the man who embraced European unity — once calling it an"art" — raged at the French ahead of their"no" vote in a 2005 referendum on the European constitution meant to fortify the EU."If you want to shoot yourself in the foot, do it, but after don't complain," he said."It's stupid, I'm telling you." He was personally and politically humiliated by the defeat.
Yet he retained a common touch that worked wonders on the campaign trail, exuding warmth when kissing babies and enthusiasm when farmers — a key constituency — displayed their tractors. His preferences were for western movies and beer — and"tete de veau," calf's head. Later that year, an extreme right militant shot at Chirac — and missed — during a Bastille Day parade in 2002. Inspecting troops, the president was unaware of the drama.
He was formally charged in 2007 after he left office as president, losing immunity from prosecution. In 2011, he was found guilty of misuse of public money, breach of trust and illegal conflict of interest and given a two-year suspended jail sentence. Chirac served in Algeria during the independence war, which France lost, and enrolled at France's Ecole Nationale d'Administration, the elite training ground for the French political class.
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