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As a journalist and lawyer, he defended Jean Mons, Secretary-General of the Defence 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 Mitterrand, president of the Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance (UDSR) party, himself suspected in the same scandal.
Politics
In 1956, he was elected deputy for Haute-Vienne département under the UDSR banner. He lost his seat in the 1958 legislative election, which followed the return of General Charles de Gaulle to power. He came back into the French National Assembly between 1967 and 1968 as representative of Corrèzedépartement. As a member of the renewed Socialist Party (PS) led by Mitterrand, he became deputy for Gironde in 1973, then for Dordogne on the occasion of the "pink wave" of 1981. In 1974, he acted as defence lawyer for Hilarion Capucci, who was prosecuted in Israel on charges of smuggling weapons into the country for the PLO.[1]
When President Mitterrand appointed Laurent Fabius as Prime Minister in July 1984, Dumas joined the cabinet as Minister of European Affairs. Five months later, he replaced Foreign MinisterClaude Cheysson. He remained in this position until the Socialist defeat in the March 1986 legislative election. Nevertheless, he returned to the Quai d'Orsay after the re-election of Mitterrand in May 1988, until the PS defeat in the March 1993 legislative elections. He was the French Foreign Minister during the collapse of the Soviet Block, the Gulf War, and the negotiations of the Maastricht Treaty.
In June 2013, during an appearance on the French news channel La Chaîne parlementaire, Dumas claimed that British officials had been preparing for intervention in Syria two years before the start of the Arab Spring. "I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business," he said. "I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria. This was in Britain not in America. Britain was organising an invasion of rebels into Syria."[2]
Convictions
Accused in the Elf affair, he resigned from the Presidency of the Constitutional Council in January 1999.
Dumas' conviction for criticising a public prosecutor in his book was found unlawful by the European Court of Human Rights in 2010, by five votes to two.[3]
In May 2007, Dumas received a 12-month jail sentence (suspended) for funds he mis-appropriated acting as executor of the will of the widow of Alberto Giacometti.
Controversial comments on Valls
In February 2015, Dumas suggested Prime MinisterManuel Valls was probably acting under Jewish "influence." During an interview on BFM-TV, Dumas stated that the prime minister "has personal alliances that mean he has prejudices...Everyone knows he is married to someone really good but who has an influence on him," an apparent reference to Valls' wife, Anne Gravoin, who is Jewish. When directly asked by a reporter if Valls "[was] under a Jewish influence?" Dumas responded, "Probably, I would think so." The French Socialist party subsequently released a statement declaring that Dumas' claims were "unworthy of a Socialist decorated by the Republic". Valls declined to comment on Dumas's claims, except to say that Dumas was "a man with a known past and his remarks which have done no credit to the Republic for a long time."[4]
Member of the National Assembly of France for Dordogne : 1981–1983 (Became minister in 1983) / 1986–1988 (Became minister in 1988). Elected in 1981, reelected in 1986, 1988.
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