French Rightist Taking Aim at Mitterrand : Politics: A conservative leader says president should step down, if the second round of elections goes as expected.

One of the main leaders of the moderate-right alliance that won the first round of French parliamentary elections called Tuesday for Socialist President Francois Mitterrand to resign from office or cease playing an active role in government if the conservatives take power as expected next week.

Former Prime Minister Jacques Chirac--mayor of Paris and leader of the neo-Gaullist Rally for the Republic party, which had the strongest showing in Sunday’s first round of voting--said Mitterrand should step down “in the interest of France” if the second round next Sunday confirms the conservative sweep of Parliament.

“It is clearly in France’s interest that Mitterrand resign and that we have new presidential elections,” said Chirac, on the campaign trail for conservative candidates in the northern city of Arras. “If not, under any circumstances, he should not meddle with the new government.”

The 76-year-old Mitterrand has two years remaining of his term in office. However, the dismal showing by his Socialist Party in the first-round voting against the alliance of center-right parties has put pressure on Mitterrand, who is under treatment for prostate cancer, to cut his term short after 12 years in power.

According to computer projections, the Union for France alliance is expected to win at least 450 of the 577 seats in the French Parliament in the runoffs four days from now. The Socialists are not expected to win more than 80 seats.

Also Tuesday, the two main parties in the conservative alliance at least temporarily resolved their differences over the slate of candidates to field in the runoffs. On Monday, former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing, leader of the center-right French Democratic Union party, angered his partners in the alliance by announcing that his party’s candidates will not step down in races where they are in one-on-one duels with other alliance candidates.

The difference affected about 30 of the 69 races in which both the Rally for the Republic and the Democratic Union fielded candidates, and was the first sign of a crack in the conservative political front facing the Socialists and their Communist Party partners. The internecine dispute was resolved amicably Tuesday when Giscard d’Estaing’s party agreed to withdraw candidates in all but four of the districts with disputed elections.

While the conservatives were mending fences, cracks were beginning to show in the demoralized Socialist ranks. Former Prime Minister Michel Rocard, considered the front-runner to replace the lame-duck Mitterrand at the head of the Socialist ticket in the 1995 presidential elections, blamed the president for the party’s poor electoral showing.

In a speech in a Paris suburb, where he is behind in a race to save his own parliamentary seat, Rocard said the Socialists are plagued by “arrogance” and a “whiff of scandals.”

In a thinly veiled attack on Mitterrand, his longtime rival in Socialist internal politics, Rocard said the time has come to change “the excessively elitist and imperial character” of the Mitterrand regime.