Former French President Jacques Chirac dies

Former French President Jacques Chirac, a conservative leader who firmly opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq, died Thursday. He was 86. His son-in-law, Frédéric Salat-Baroux, said Chirac died “peacefully, among his loved ones” without confirming the cause of death. French President Emmanuel Macron will deliver a nationally televised speech in his honor on Thursday evening.

How will he be remembered? Chirac served as president from 1995 to 2007. He was also a two-term prime minister and three-term mayor of Paris. A week before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Chirac warned that war “is always the worst of solutions, because it brings death and misery.” He was the first leader to acknowledge France’s role in the persecution of Jews and their deportation during the Holocaust. Allegations of embezzlement during his time as mayor led to a 2011 corruption conviction, the first for a former president of France.

Dig deeper: From the WORLD archives, read Joel Belz’s column about the transfer of power from Chirac to pro-U.S. President Nicolas Sarkozy.