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Roland Dumas is a city and commune, the capital of the Haute-Vienne department and the administrative capital of the Limousin région in west-central France....
, Haute-Vienne) is a lawyer and French Socialist politician who served notably as Foreign Minister under President
François MitterrandFrançois Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was the 21st President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra, serving from 1981 until 1995. He is the longest-serving President of France and, as leader of the Socialist Party, the only figure from the left so far elected President...
from 1984 to 1986 and from 1988 to 1993. He was also President of the
Constitutional CouncilThe Constitutional Council is the highest constitutional authority in France. It was established by the Constitution of the Fifth Republic on 4 October 1958, and its duty is to ensure that the principles and rules of the constitution are upheld.Its main activity is to rule on whether proposed...
from 1995 to 1999.
Youth
Son of Georges Dumas, a civil servant in
LimogesLimoges |Limousin]] dialect of Occitan) is a city and commune, the capital of the Haute-Vienne department and the administrative capital of the Limousin région in west-central France....
's region and Socialist resistant to the German Occupation during the Second World War, shot at by the
GestapoThe Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
, he conveyed weapons for the Resistance. He was arrested after the boycott of the
Berlin Philharmonic OrchestraThe Berlin Philharmonic, German: , formerly Berliner Philharmonisches Orchester , is an orchestra based in Berlin, Germany. In 2006, a group of ten European media outlets voted the Berlin Philharmonic number three on a list of "top ten European Orchestras", after the Vienna Philharmonic and the...
by French students. After the war, he completed his law and political science studies in the
Ecole libre des sciences politiquesThe Institut d'études politiques de Paris , simply referred to as Sciences Po , is a public research and higher education institution in Paris, France, specialised in the social sciences. It has the status of grand établissement, which allows its admissions process to be highly selective...
and the
London School of EconomicsThe London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...
.
Journalist and lawyer, he defended Jean Mons, Secretary-General of the Defense Committee, from charges of negligence in a case where Mons's assistant was accused of passing secrets of national security to communists. In this, he became close to
François MitterrandFrançois Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was the 21st President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra, serving from 1981 until 1995. He is the longest-serving President of France and, as leader of the Socialist Party, the only figure from the left so far elected President...
, president of the
Democratic and Socialist Union of the ResistanceThe Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance was a French political party found at the Liberation and in activity during the Fourth Republic...
(UDSR) party, himself suspected in the same scandal.
Politics
In 1956, he was elected deputy for
Haute-VienneHaute-Vienne is a French department named after the Vienne River. It is one of three departments that together constitute the French region of Limousin.The chief and largest city is Limoges...
département, under the UDSR banner, but he lost his seat in the
1958 legislative election- National Assembly by Parliamentary Group:...
, which followed the return of General
Charles de GaulleCharles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969....
to power. He came back into the
French National AssemblyThe French National Assembly is the lower house of the bicameral Parliament of France under the Fifth Republic. The upper house is the Senate ....
between 1967 and 1968 as representative of
CorrèzeCorrèze is a department in south central France, named after the Corrèze River.The inhabitants of the department are called Corréziens or Corréziennes according to gender.-History:...
département. Member of the renewed
Socialist PartyThe Socialist Party is a social-democratic political party in France and the largest party of the French centre-left. It is one of the two major contemporary political parties in France, along with the center-right Union for a Popular Movement...
(PS) led by Mitterrand, he became deputy for
GirondeFor the Revolutionary party, see Girondists.Gironde is a common name for the Gironde estuary, where the mouths of the Garonne and Dordogne rivers merge, and for a department in the Aquitaine region situated in southwest France.-History:...
département in 1973, then for
DordogneDordogne is a départment in south-west France. The départment is located in the region of Aquitaine, between the Loire valley and the High Pyrénées named after the great river Dordogne that runs through it...
département on the occasion of the
"pink wave" of 1981French legislative elections took place on 14 June and 21 June 1981 to elect the 7th National Assembly of the Fifth Republic.On 10 May 1981 François Mitterrand was elected President of France. He became the first Socialist to win this post under universal suffrage...
.
When President Mitterrand appointed
Laurent FabiusLaurent Fabius is a French Socialist politician. He served as Prime Minister from 17 July 1984 to 20 March 1986. He was 37 years old when he was appointed and is, so far, the youngest Prime Minister of the Fifth Republic.-Early life:...
as
Prime MinisterThe Prime Minister of France in the Fifth Republic is the head of government and of the Council of Ministers of France. The head of state is the President of the French Republic...
in July 1984, he joined the cabinet as Minister of European Affairs. Five months later, he replaced
Foreign MinisterMinistry of Foreign and European Affairs ), is France's foreign affairs ministry, with the headquarters located on the Quai d'Orsay in Paris close to the National Assembly of France. The Minister of Foreign and European Affairs in the government of France is the cabinet minister responsible for...
Claude CheyssonClaude Cheysson is a French Socialist politician who served as Foreign Minister in the government of Pierre Mauroy from 1981 to 1984.-Career:...
. He remained in this function until the Socialist defeat in the
March 1986 legislative electionThe French legislative elections took place on 16 March 1986 to elect the 8th National Assembly of the Fifth Republic. Contrary to other legislative elections of the Fifth Republic, the electoral system used was that of Party-list proportional representation.Since the 1981 election of François...
. Nevertheless, he returned to the
Quai d'OrsayThe Quai d'Orsay is a quai in the VIIe arrondissement of Paris, part of the left bank of the Seine, and the name of the street along it. The Quai becomes the Quai Anatole France east of the Palais Bourbon, and the Quai de Branly west of the Pont de l'Alma.The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs is...
after the re-election of Mitterrand in May 1988, until the PS defeat in the March 1993 legislative elections. Indeed, he was the French Foreign Minister during the collapse of the Soviet Block, the
Gulf WarThe Persian Gulf War , commonly referred to as simply the Gulf War, was a war waged by a U.N.-authorized coalition force from 34 nations led by the United States, against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait.The war is also known under other names, such as the First Gulf...
, and the negotiations of the
Maastricht TreatyThe Maastricht Treaty was signed on 7 February 1992 by the members of the European Community in Maastricht, Netherlands. On 9–10 December 1991, the same city hosted the European Council which drafted the treaty...
.
Convictions
Not re-elected to the
French National AssemblyThe French National Assembly is the lower house of the bicameral Parliament of France under the Fifth Republic. The upper house is the Senate ....
in 1993, he was nominated President of the
Constitutional CouncilThe Constitutional Council is the highest constitutional authority in France. It was established by the Constitution of the Fifth Republic on 4 October 1958, and its duty is to ensure that the principles and rules of the constitution are upheld.Its main activity is to rule on whether proposed...
in 1995. This was one of the last decisions of President Mitterrand. Under his presidency, the body argued in favour of complete judicial
immunityJudicial Immunity is a form of legal immunity which protects judges and others employed by the judiciary from lawsuits brought against them for official conduct in office, no matter how incompetent, negligent, or malicious such conduct might be, even if this conduct is in violation of statutes.For...
for the French
PresidentThe President of the French Republic colloquially referred to in English as the President of France, is France's elected Head of State....
--a controversial decision given both
Jacques ChiracJacques René Chirac is a French politician who served as President of France from 1995 to 2007. He previously served as Prime Minister of France from 1974 to 1976 and from 1986 to 1988 , and as Mayor of Paris from 1977 to 1995.After completing his studies of the DEA's degree at the...
and Dumas's numerous scandals. Accused in the
Elf affairElf Aquitaine was a French oil company which merged with TotalFina to form TotalFinaElf. The new company changed its name to Total in 2003...
, he resigned in January 1999.
Dumas' conviction for criticising a public prosecutor in his book was found unlawful by the
European Court of Human RightsThe European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg is a supra-national court established by the European Convention on Human Rights and hears complaints that a contracting state has violated the human rights enshrined in the Convention and its protocols. Complaints can be brought by individuals or...
in 2010, by five votes to two.
In May 2007, Dumas received a 12-month jail sentence (supended) for funds he mis-appropriated acting as executor of the will of the widow of
Alberto GiacomettiAlberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and printmaker.Alberto Giacometti was born in the canton Graubünden's southerly alpine valley Val Bregaglia and came from an artistic background; his father, Giovanni, was a well-known post-Impressionist painter...
.
M. Dumas is a member of the
Emergency Committee for IraqThe Emergency Committee for Iraq was formed by Ramsey Clark, Roland Dumas, Ahmed Ben Bella and Tun Mahathir Mohammad all former senior politicians, to strive to encourage respect for the rule of law in Iraq....
.
Legal Intervention in Concert with Gaddafi Regime
On 29 May 2011, along with attorney
Jacques VergèsJacques Vergès, born 5 March 1925 in Ubon Ratchathani, Siam , is a French-Vietnamese lawyer who has earned fame continually since the 1950s, first as an anticolonialist communist figure and then for defending a long string of well-known clients from anticolonialist Algerian militant Djamila...
, Roland announced plans to sue French President Nicholas Sarkozy for crimes against humanity in relation to the
NATO bombing campaign against the Gaddafi government as part of the
2011 Libyan civil warThe 2011 Libyan civil war was an armed conflict in the North African state of Libya, fought between forces loyal to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and those seeking to oust his government. The war was preceded by protests in Benghazi beginning on 15 February 2011, which led to clashes with security...
. A Gaddafi government spokesman made a concurrent announcement, seeming to endorse the legal action.
In a program which aired on Libya's Al-Jamahiriya TV on May 29, 2011 (as translated by MEMRI), Dumas sharply criticzed Sarkozy, stating that the only thing I know [about French Leaders] is that they have gone crazy. President Sarkozy hosted Qadhafi a few months ago at the Élysée Palace, with a red carpet and all the grandiose honors. Two months later, Sarkozy is leading a crusader war, at the head of NATO, which has become a pawn serving international politics. This has been going on for a long time. He further stated that "I regret to see my country, to which I belong with spirit, blood, and life, leading an instrument such as NATO to come and destroy an entire people and attack its leaders."
Political career
Governmental functions
President of the
Constitutional Council of FranceThe Constitutional Council is the highest constitutional authority in France. It was established by the Constitution of the Fifth Republic on 4 October 1958, and its duty is to ensure that the principles and rules of the constitution are upheld.Its main activity is to rule on whether proposed...
: 1995–2000 (Resignation).
Governmental functions
Minister for European Affairs : 1983–1984.
Minister of External Relations : 1984–1986.
Government spokesman : June–December 1984.
Minister of Foreign Affairs : 1988–1993.
Electoral mandates
National Assembly of France
Member of the National Assembly of France for
Haute-VienneHaute-Vienne is a French department named after the Vienne River. It is one of three departments that together constitute the French region of Limousin.The chief and largest city is Limoges...
: 1956–1958. Elected in 1956.
Member of the National Assembly of France for
CorrèzeCorrèze is a department in south central France, named after the Corrèze River.The inhabitants of the department are called Corréziens or Corréziennes according to gender.-History:...
: 1967–1968. Elected in 1967.
Member of the National Assembly of France for
DordogneDordogne is a départment in south-west France. The départment is located in the region of Aquitaine, between the Loire valley and the High Pyrénées named after the great river Dordogne that runs through it...
: 1981–1983 (Became minister in 1983) / 1986–1988 (Became minister in 1988). Elected in 1981, reelected in 1986, 1988.