Burnished by Summit, Chirac Seeks to Mend Fences With Voters

PARIS — For one of the world’s most powerful men, it was truly the best of times Tuesday and perhaps the most unsettled.

In the morning, French President Jacques Chirac, host for a day to President Clinton, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin and Europe’s NATO leaders, basked in the pomp and ritual of international summitry--honor guard with glittering swords, resounding speeches about peace and statesmanship, and a gourmet state lunch featuring “symphony of shellfish” and vintage ’85 Petrus red Bordeaux.

Then in the evening, fighting to keep his political margin of maneuverability after his decision to call early elections boomeranged, the 64-year-old French president returned to unpleasant reality and went on the airwaves to make a pitch for his people’s support.

“I got your message last Sunday,” Chirac assured voters in a radio and television address heralded by a rendition of “La Marseillaise.” He was referring to the low score of mainstream conservative parties, the worst since the current French political system was adopted in 1958, in the first round of parliamentary elections over the weekend.

To try to salvage the coalition’s fortunes when voters return to the polls Sunday, Prime Minister Alain Juppe, a close Chirac ally, fell on his sword Monday by saying he will resign if the conservatives he has headed are reelected. On television Tuesday night, Chirac had been expected to give a clear indication of what--or who--would follow Juppe.

Instead, Chirac delivered a seven-minute-long pledge that if voters give him a majority in the National Assembly, his neo-Gaullist party and its partners will somehow manage to reconcile the simultaneous needs to modernize France, pare down the size of the state, cut taxes and boost business while also offering protection to the weakest members of society and limiting the effects of economic and cultural globalization.

“My dear compatriots, let’s not look for the French model elsewhere,” Chirac urged. “For two centuries, it is in the motto of the republic: Nothing without liberty, nothing without equality and nothing without fraternity.”

He did not say who will replace Juppe if the coalition manages to win. On the whole, it was the same kind of fuzzy program that analysts say has hamstrung the center-right and boosted the chances of the opposition Socialists and their Communist allies since the snap election campaign began in late April.

“It’s the marriage of the carp and the rabbit; by trying to get across two messages, you get across none,” said Pascal Perrineau of the Paris-based Study Center on French Political Life. Since Juppe is now out of the firing line, Perrineau said, Chirac’s own personal authority and prestige have been put directly at risk.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, president of the far-right National Front party, who detests Chirac, mocked his pledges, saying Chirac is now doomed to “cohabitation” with a hostile Parliament and government.

But earlier in the day, at the French president’s official residence, the Elysee Palace on Paris’ Right Bank, the ceremony of summit-holding ticked along perfectly oblivious to Chirac’s political problems. Ever the solicitous host, the gangly French leader waited on the steps in brilliant sunshine, natty in his dark gray suit and blue tie, to greet each head of state or government who had arrived in Paris to sign the NATO-Russia Founding Act.

The limousines crunching over the gravel in the palace courtyard ferried in a cargo of the most important leaders in Europe and North America, from Iceland’s David Oddsson to Turkey’s Suleyman Demirel. For a day, Paris was again the capital of the world, and for Chirac, who speaks excellent English and good Russian, and who engaged in frequent tete-a-tetes with Clinton and Yeltsin, it was an opportunity to glitter.

Clinton put in a special plug, thanking Chirac “for his strong leadership in making this day possible and for hosting us.”

In his speech of welcome, Chirac evoked his hero, Charles de Gaulle, who “refused the division [that is} against [the] nature of Europe.”