This article may be a rough translation from French. It may have been generated, in whole or in part, by a computer or by a translator without dual proficiency. Please help to enhance the translation. The original article is under "français" in the "languages" list.
If you have just labeled this article as needing attention, please add {{subst:Needtrans|pg=Roland Dumas |language=fr |comments= }} ~~~~ to the bottom of the WP:PNTCU section on Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English.(July 2022)
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. Because of 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.
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 Bloc, 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."[3]
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.[4]
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 Socialist Party subsequently released a statement declaring that Dumas's 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".[5]
Personal life and death
Dumas was married to Théodora Voultepsis, a former Miss Greece from 1951 through 1954, and to Anne-Marie Lillet, whom he married in 1961. (She was scion of the Lillet beverage family; they separated but never divorced.)[1] Dumas turned 100 in August 2022,[6] and died in Paris on 3 July 2024 at the age of 101.[7]
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.