Chirac breaks silence on scandal
 

France's President Jacques Chirac has denounced the "dictatorship of rumors" at the heart of a political scandal threatening his government, and rebuffed calls for the resignation of his prime minister.

"I have full confidence in the government of Dominique de Villepin, to lead the mission I gave him," Chirac said Wednesday of the prime minister, who has faced growing pressure to resign. It was the first time the president had spoken out personally on the scandal, which centers on claims that Villepin investigated a political rival.

"The Republic is not the dictatorship of rumors, the dictatorship of false accusations. The Republic is the law," Chirac said.

He noted that judges are investigating. They must do their "job, establish the facts, all the facts ... I hope that this will be done in calm and as quickly as possible," he said.

The opposition Socialist Party and others have almost daily urged Chirac to speak out and take action to end the spiral of rumors that are tarnishing his leadership and administration.

Chirac, speaking after a weekly Cabinet meeting, suggested that electoral politics are fueling the scandal. Presidential and legislative elections come in 2007.

He also warned that the scandal could turn off voters and play into the hands of extremists. The "outrageous exploitation" of judicial investigations risks making the French "despair of politics," he said.

The scandal grew out of fake lists of names of French personalities -- including Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy -- allegedly holding accounts in the Luxembourg bank Clearstream to receive kickbacks from the 1991 sale of French frigates to Taiwan. The lists have been shows to be false.