THE Socialist opposition leader, Mr Lionel Jospin, has called for the lifting of secrecy laws to reveal all about the phone tapping ordered by the late President Mitterrand.
"We must do away with this monarchical secrecy in our country, whoever the president concerned may be. Let us put transparency into our democracy at last," Mr Jospin said.
The Prime Minister, Mr Alain Juppe, has refused to lift secrecy laws which prevent Mr Gilles Menage, former chief presidential aide, from testifying in a judicial inquiry into the phone taps.
Mr Menage and 10 other people, including former top Socialist officials and the present head of Renault, Mr Louis Schweitzer, who was chief of staff of the former Socialist prime minister, Mr Laurent Fabius, have been charged with intrusion into the private lives of personalities, violating the constitution and abuse of authority.
Mr Jospin, who as presidential candidate in 1995 criticised Mr Mitterrand far his "contrasted" record, said that press revelations about the phone taps were "a sorry .... this does not correspond to the image I had of him".
Last week, the daily, Le Monde, and weekly, L'Express, published documents showing that Mr Mitterrand personally ran a system of phone tapping to spy on French politicians, lawyers, journalists and writers in the 1980s and early 1990s.
They revealed details of documents stashed away by Mr Christian Prouteau, former head of an anti terrorist unit at the Elysee Palace, who carried out the phone taps.
The documents were found by the secret service last February in a lock up in a Paris suburb, where they had been left by Mr Prouteau at the end of Mr Mitterrand's 14 years in power in 1995.
Also at the weekend, former defence minister, Mr Francois Leotard, head of the Union for French Democracy, a junior partner in the ruling conservative coalition, said that secrecy laws should not be used as "artificial barriers to protect the state".
But former budget minister, Mr Michel Charasse, a close confidant of Mr Mitterrand, justified the phone taps as necessary in the fight against terrorism.
Mr Charasse said Mr Mitterrand had ordered them because there were "serious threats" to the safety of his illegitimate daughter, Ms Mazarine Pingeot, whose existence had been kept a secret in spite of revelations by writer, Mr Jean Edern Hallier, one of the more famous phone tap victims.
Mr Hallier, who died of a heart attack earlier this year, had been "directly threatened by Francois Mitterrand", his brother, Mr Laurent, said in an interview yesterday with the sensationalist daily, France Soir.
The right wing maverick politician, Mr Phillippe de Villiers, demanded assurances from President Jacques Chirac that these "methods of `yobbocracy' are no longer used".