Chirac ailing

Paris

President Jacques Chirac spent this week in a hospital, after suffering what his doctors called a “mini-stroke.” The doctors said the condition was not serious and that Chirac, 72, would fully recover. But politicians in Chirac’s own center-right party seem to be writing his epitaph already. Two of them are now campaigning openly to succeed him as president in 2007. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, Chirac’s close aide, says he would offer “change in continuity,” while Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, Chirac’s main rival within the party, is calling for “a rupture with the past.”

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