French politician Roland Dumas had a long and colourful career, but will forever be remembered by New Zealanders as his country’s foreign minister at the time of the Rainbow Warrior controversy. Dumas and then New Zealand deputy prime minister Geoffrey Palmer initiated talks to strike a diplomatic settlement in the wake of French agents sinking the Greenpeace vessel in Auckland Harbour. Dumas, the son of a French Resistance hero who was killed by the Gestapo during World War 2, was France’s foreign minister between 1984-86 and 1988-93. A close ally of former socialist president Francois Mitterrand, Dumas was praised for his part in creating a unified Europe, working closely with his German counterpart Hans-Dietrich Genscher. In the course of his long and illustrious legal career, Dumas built up a reputation as an eloquent orator, a charming advocate — but also, like Mitterrand, was an inveterate ladies’ man. It was his weakness for women that would prove to be his downfall: a former mistress, Christine Deviers-Joncour, testified in court that she was paid millions of dollars to influence Dumas. The trial forced him to resign as president of France’s Constitutional Council, a move he described as heartbreaking. In 2001, Dumas was sentenced to six months in jail and fined €150,000 for receiving gifts illegally paid for by the former state-owned oil company, Elf, before being acquitted on appeal. He died on July 3 aged 101. — Agencies
