Chirac honours late Charles de Gaulle

French President Jacques Chirac and leading ministers today laid the first brick at a new memorial honouring the late General Charles de Gaulle on the 36th anniversary of the iconic president’s death.

Chirac, heir to de Gaulle’s conservative mantle, emphasised the lasting relevance of de Gaulle’s political legacy during the ceremony in the north-eastern town of Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises, where he is buried.

“The more time passes, the more General de Gaulle’s stature grows,” Chirac said. “He dominates our history. He represents France at its best.”

The €15m memorial complex is expected to open in 2008.

De Gaulle, who led the French resistance to the German occupation during the Second World War, headed a provisional post-war government and governed the country from 1958 to 1969 and was France’s most influential post-war statesman.

He gave women the right to vote in 1945, granted independence following a bloody colonial war to Algeria in 1962, laid the groundwork for a post-war Franco-German alliance and totally revamped the French constitution to create the Fifth Republic in 1958.

He was often at odds with the United States.

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie and de Gaulle’s son, Philippe de Gaulle, also attended the ceremony.

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, the governing UMP party’s likely candidate in the country’s presidential elections next spring, did not attend. Sarkozy, who presents himself as part of a new breed of French politician, has sought to mark his independence from Chirac and other Gaullists.

Sarkozy has pressed for changing the de Gaulle-inspired constitution to reduce the power of the prime minister to that of a simple government co-ordinator.

Sarkozy also believes the president should be able to directly explain his policies to politicians, though the constitution forbids the president from entering parliament, in the name of separation of powers.

Chirac and Sarkozy have often had tense relations. During his speech, the French president warned Sarkozy against tampering with de Gaulle’s legacies. “Never could the constitution of the Fifth Republic be an obstacle for France’s modernisation,” Chirac said.