Ex-French president, who stood up to the US on Iraq, dies at 86

PARIS — Jacques Chirac, a two-term French president who was the first leader to acknowledge France’s role in the Holocaust and who defiantly opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, died Thursday at 86.

President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute in a nationally televised speech to a predecessor he called “a statesman we loved as much as he loved us.”

The Eiffel Tower went dark in the former head of state’s honor Thursday night, and a national day of mourning will be observed Monday. Scores of people lined up to enter the Elysee presidential palace so they could sign condolence books.

World leaders were effusive in their praise for the man who led France for 12 years.

Chirac died “peacefully, among his loved ones,” his son-in-law Frederic SalatBaroux told The Associated Press. He did not give a cause of death, although Chirac had had repeated health problems since leaving office in 2007.

Chirac was long the standard-bearer of France’s conservative right, and mayor of Paris for nearly two decades. As president from 1995-2007, he was a consummate global diplomat but failed to reform the French economy or defuse tensions between police and minority youths that exploded into riots across France in 2005.

Yet Chirac showed courage and statesmanship during his presidency.

In what may have been his finest hour, France’s last leader with memories of World War II crushed the myth of his nation’s innocence in the persecution of Jews and their deportation during the Holocaust when he acknowledged the actions of the French nation at the time.

“Yes, the criminal folly of the occupiers was seconded by the French, by the French state,” he said on July 16, 1995. “France, the land of the Enlightenment and human rights ... delivered those it protects to their executioners.”

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.

At home, a host of scandals dogged Chirac, including allegations of the misuse of funds and of kickbacks during his time as Paris mayor.

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. He did not attend the trial. His lawyers said he was suffering severe memory lapses, possibly related to a stroke.

Chirac ultimately became one of the French’

In his 40 years in public life, Chirac was derided by critics as opportunistic and impulsive. But as president, he embodied the fierce independence so treasured in France. He championed the United Nations and multi-polarism as a counterweight to U.S. global dominance, and defended agricultural subsidies over protests by the European Union.

Jacques Chirac was born in Paris on Nov. 29, 1932, the only child of a well-to-do businessman. A lively youth, he was expelled from school for shooting paper wads at a teacher.

Chirac traveled to the United States as a young man, and as president he fondly remembered hitchhiking across the country. He worked as a fork-lift operator in St. Louis and a soda jerk at a Howard Johnson’s restaurant while attending summer school at Harvard University.

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.

Chirac is survived by his wife and daughter Claude. His daughter Laurence died in 2016 after a long illness.

Associated Press writers Angela Charlton and Sylvie Corbet contributed to this report.