Paris - The four-year-old cohabitation between President Chirac and the Prime Minister, Mr Jospin, showed further signs of fraying yesterday when Mr Jospin lost his temper in the National Assembly, reports Lara Marlowe.
"If you keep at it," the Prime Minister told right-wing deputies who brought up his Trotskyite past, "each of us will have to justify what he said or did not say." Mr Jospin admitted he had perhaps taken too long to explain himself to journalists, "but that's less serious than taking one's time to explain oneself before judges". (Mr Chirac rejected a judge's summons in connection with a corruption scandal last March, claiming it was unconstitutional.)
Mr Jean-Louis Debre, who heads the RPR Gaullist group, accused Mr Jospin of "blowing a fuse". Whenever the Prime Minister was in difficulty or did not want to respond, Mr Debre said, "he loses all sang-froid, all dignity".