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France's Dumas quitting post in corruption scandal

PARIS: Roland Dumas, the former French foreign minister due to stand trial on corruption charges, said in an interview published on Saturday that he was quitting his post as France's top legal authority.

Dumas, one of the closest friends of the late president Francois Mitterrand, has heard increasing calls to step down since magistrates ruled last week that he and his ex-mistress Christine Deviers-Joncour must stand trial.

"I'm leaving," Dumas, 77, told the daily Le Figaro. He did not specify when he would step down as president of the Constitutional Council, the fifth-highest post in France.

Dumas's lawyer Jean-Rene Farhouat said the official announcement would come "on Monday evening at the earliest and Wednesday at the latest", according to Le Figaro.

Dumas and Deviers-Joncour face charges of misusing funds from her former employer, the then state-owned oil company Elf Aquitaine.

The daily Le Monde reported on Friday that the other eight members of the Council, which verifies the constitutionality of laws, had pressed him on Thursday to resign voluntarily to avoid further damage to the reputation of the institution.

Prosecutors suspect Dumas, twice foreign minister during Mitterrand's presidency, of helping Deviers-Joncour get her job with Elf and of benefiting from the windfall she received in the form of cash, a credit card and a chic Paris apartment.

A separate investigation is under way into allegations that Deviers-Joncour received hefty payments to lobby Dumas to approve the controversial 1991 sale of six frigates to Taiwan by another state-controlled firm, Thomson-CSF.-Reuters