Jacques Chirac

BSO music director Yuri Temirkanov has been asked to conduct a concert by Russian president Vladimir Putin for visiting French President Jacques Chirac next Thursday at the Noblemen's Assembly (the home of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic) in St. Petersburg. As Chief Conductor and Music Director state-supported and owned Philharmonic, Temirkanov had frequent dealings with the KGB, the Soviet secret police. Putin, from St. Petersburg, was one-time top KGB official and has known Temirkanov for years.

PARIS - President Jacques Chirac, under pressure to show results before next month's crucial legislative elections, named a conservative interim Cabinet yesterday, putting a steel magnate in charge of the economy and creating a powerful new security chief to get tough on crime. The 21-member Cabinet, proposed by Chirac's new prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, was unveiled at the Elysee Palace two days after Chirac's landslide victory in the presidential runoff election over far-right leader Jean Marie Le-Pen.

PARIS (AP) - The first American soldier to enter Paris during the liberation in World War II - Roger Provencher, 67, a retired diplomat who lives in Chevy Chase - has received the city's Medal of Honor.Mr. Provenches was awarded the medal in a ceremony Friday in Paris at the 16th century Hotel de Ville. Calling himself a "simple soldier," he said he was sharing the award with all Allied forces.As a 21-year-old corporal of the 1st Infantry Division, Mr. Provencher was part of a 12-man Franco-American reconnaissance team that entered the city Aug. 27, 1944, ahead of the main Allied force.

PARIS -- President Jacques Chirac and his unpopular conservative government are facing a second autumn of unrest over spending cuts that they insist are necessary even with unemployment at its highest level in nearly 50 years.Some subway and bus workers in Paris went on strike Friday for a pay raise and an end to job cuts, though they did not bring service to a halt. Teachers have called a nationwide strike for tomorrow, and all the big railroad and civil service unions plan to stop work for 24 hours on Oct. 17. They are protesting the government's plans to trim the public payroll as part of a spending freeze intended to cut the budget deficit.

PARIS --Tens of thousands of students marched through Paris and other French cities yesterday, stepping up their opposition to a new law that makes it easier to hire and fire young workers. In Paris, university and high school students, joined by teachers, workers, union members and Communist Party members, marched across town stopping traffic as they chanted slogans such as "We're not cannon fodder" and "We're not young flesh for the boss." Near the Sorbonne, police clashed with small groups of protesters, dispersing them with tear gas. More than half of France's 84 public universities remained completely or partially closed yesterday because of student blockades, according to the Ministry of National Education.

COMPIEGNE, France --President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia dismissed concerns over his country's growing interest in the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. at a meeting here yesterday with his French and German counterparts. "As far as the acquisition of a 5 percent stake is concerned, it is not at all evidence of aggressive behavior on the part of the Russian side," Putin told reporters. "We will not use this stake to change in any way the institutional situation of EADS." Discussions with President Jacques Chirac of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany at Compiegne, north of Paris, included Russia's handling of its energy resources and such diplomatic issues as Lebanon and Iran.

French presidential elections will give that nation the most undividedly conservative government it has had since World War II. In the first round today, voters will pare a field of nine candidates down to two, with the run-off to be held May 7.In a final public opinion polls last Sunday, Paris Mayor Jacques Chirac led with 26 percent of the vote, followed by the Socialist candidate, Lionel Jospin, with 20 percent and Prime Minister Edouard Balladur with...

THE WORLD'S HOPE for a cessation of nuclear weapons test explosions rose when China exploded its 45th device since 1964 and joined France in saying its own tests are over. It was a small underground blast hours before 61 nations resumed the Conference on Disarmament at Geneva.The rush to conclude testing before the conference is one of the few reassuring signs that China's present rulers actually pay heed to world opinion. Like the conservative President Jacques Chirac of France, the Communist President Jiang Zemin of China finally did what his foreign critics kept lecturing him to do.Now that the world's five admitted nuclear powers have each unilaterally stopped testing, the chance of a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty emerging from this conference is that much improved.

PARIS - In a sign that Europe's grand experiment with a constitution could unravel, France and Germany threatened yesterday to reject it if smaller countries continue to insist on negotiating changes designed to enhance their power. After a one-hour meeting with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder at the Elysee Palace, French President Jacques Chirac told reporters: "The chancellor and I will not accept an agreement at any price and under any conditions. We want a deal that fits with the line of thinking that we have about the Europe of tomorrow."

FRENCH VOTERS will choose in the parliamentary election starting today between the welfare state to which they feel entitled or a common European currency the year after next. That is, they must choose between a leftish party and the ruling conservative coalition. Both promise the French can have it all; neither means it.Two center-right parties knocked the Socialists out of the box in the 1993 parliamentary elections, winning four-fifths of the seats. In 1995 Gaullist Jacques Chirac won the presidency long held by Socialist Francois Mitterrand.