Chirac Named French Premier; Cabinet Picked

Socialist President Francois Mitterrand appointed conservative Jacques Chirac as premier Thursday, ushering in a new era of potential conflict in France with power at the top divided between political rivals.

After 48 hours of difficult negotiations to put together a Cabinet, the 53-year-old Chirac, a former premier whose party led a conservative coalition to a narrow victory in parliamentary elections last Sunday, accepted Mitterrand’s offer to take up the post again.

Never before in the 28 years of the Fifth Republic have the presidency and premiership been held by politicians of opposing ideologies.

‘Approved New Program’

Speaking on nationwide television from City Hall a few minutes later, Chirac, who is mayor of Paris, said that the voters, by ousting the Socialists from control of the National Assembly and electing a conservative majority, “have approved a new program for our country.”

“The rules of our constitution and the will of the French people must be respected,” he said, adding that “the French must understand that the moment has come to put an end to divisions and to rally together, in a spirit of mutual tolerance, for the renewal of our country.”

To speed implementation of some planks of the conservative program, such as the sale of nationalized industries to private investors, Chirac said he will ask the assembly to authorize his government to rule by decree on social and economic matters during the next few months. The new premier did not mention that such decrees would need Mitterrand’s signature to become law.

Bomb on Champs Elysees

One of France’s current problems was underscored even while the new premier spoke on television. A bomb, the latest of several that have terrorized Paris since late last year, exploded in a gallery of stores on the Champs Elysees during the busy, early evening shopping hour.

The latest reports said two people were killed and 28 were injured. A second bomb was found at the huge Chatelet subway station and defused.

After a brief ceremony in which Premier Laurent Fabius, a Socialist, handed over power to Chirac, the new premier rushed to the scene of the bombing. He spent 15 minutes looking at the shambles but made no comment to the press.

Previous bombings have been claimed by a mysterious group, apparently with ties to fundamentalist Muslim groups in the Middle East, that is demanding the release of a band of Iranian nationalists jailed for murder. Chirac was informed of the attack immediately after he completed his televised statement.

Chirac’s new Cabinet was announced at the Elysee Palace, the presidential palace and residence. Under the constitution, the premier proposes the ministers, but the president appoints them. The list of the Chirac cabinet bore the marks of some Mitterrand vetoes.

Mitterrand, according to French press reports, had balked at four appointments. Chirac dropped two from his Cabinet, moved a third from one post to another, and, while keeping a fourth in the same ministry, appeared to dilute its powers somewhat. The exercise demonstrated that, while the premier runs the day-to-day government under the constitution, the president still retains considerable powers.

Chirac, a tall man who wears dark-rimmed glasses and brushes his thinning hair backward, has long been a powerful player in French politics, but his popularity has not always matched his influence. Most political analysts believe that he needs a dynamic performance as premier during the next two years to achieve his long-time ambition of winning the presidency in the elections of 1988.

Baffled Some Politicians

The new premier has a reputation for energy and efficiency but for a certain amount of impetuousness as well. His political moves have baffled some politicians and annoyed others over the years. But he is given full credit for creating a political party, the Rally for the Republic, in the image of the parties of the late President Charles de Gaulle and making that party the most powerful force on the right.

Chirac is looked on as a close friend of the United States and a convert to the free market policies of President Reagan. As a young man, he traveled in the United States, his experience extending from work in a Howard Johnson’s ice cream parlor to a summer of study at Harvard University. Like his predecessor as premier, Fabius, he is a graduate of the elite National School of Administration that has trained many of the leading bureaucrats and politicians of France.

His relations with former President Valery Giscard d’Estaing illustrate some of the turns in Chirac’s political career. In 1974, he angered his fellow Gaullists by supporting Giscard d’Estaing, a moderate conservative, for president. When Giscard d’Estaing was elected, he selected Chirac as his premier. But the two quarreled continually, and Chirac resigned in protest two years later, the only premier to quit on his own since the beginning of the Fifth Republic in 1958.

Lost in First Round

After leaving the government, he organized his right-wing party and won election as mayor of Paris. He lost in the first round of voting for president in 1981 and then ensured the election of Mitterrand by giving Giscard d’Estaing only the most lukewarm support in the second round. But the two became allies again. Giscard d’Estaing led his Union for the French Democracy into the coalition with Chirac’s party that won the Sunday parliamentary elections by a bare majority.

Because of the French system, Mitterrand and Chirac have very little experience cooperating with each other. The politicians of the Fifth Republic, unlike their counterparts in Washington, have never had to work together. Mitterrand, when he was the leader of the Socialists in opposition, once lamented that, although he and former President Georges Pompidou had battled in public for 10 years, they had never spoken to each other privately, not even to say hello.

Mitterrand and Chirac have had much more contact than that, but there never has been any need for them to work together on a political project.

That may explain why their first task, the selection of a cabinet, was so difficult and divisive. Mitterrand wanted to ensure that he could work closely with the ministers in two areas that are commonly regarded as the preserve of the president--foreign affairs and defense. But Chirac appointed two politicians with high profiles--Jean Lecanuet, the president of Giscard d’Estaing’s party, as minister of external relations, and Francois Leotard, a young and popular Giscardist leader, as minister of defense.

Objected to Both

Mitterrand, who reportedly intends to set up a U.S.-style national security council at the Elysee Palace, objected to both, evidently because Lecanuet had criticized him harshly on the problem of French hostages in Lebanon and because Leotard was too political and inexperienced.

Forced to back down, Chirac dropped Lecanuet from the Cabinet and moved Leotard to another ministry, naming two lesser known men in their places. Jean-Bernard Raimond, a career diplomat now the ambassador to the Soviet Union, will be the external relations minister, and Andre Giraud, a former industry minister, will be minister of defense.

The other man dropped from the Cabinet was Sen. Etienne Dailly, whom Chirac had wanted for justice minister. Charles Pasqua, a leader in Chirac’s party, was named minister of the interior as planned, but his power was diluted when a junior minister in charge of police also was named.