Former French President Jacques Chirac Dies, Aged 86

Former President Jacques Chirac, a political chameleon who dominated French politics for decades and strived to make France's voice heard in Europe and beyond, died on Thursday at the age of 86.

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Chirac was president from 1995 to 2007. He shaped his style in the mold of post-war leader Charles de Gaulle, seeking to strengthen France's status as a player on the world stage and was best remembered for his opposition to the war in Iraq.

Chirac passed away peacefully surrounded by his loved ones, his son-in-law Frederic Salat-Baroux told Reuters.

Mayor of Paris for 18 years and prime minister for presidents on the political left and right before entering the Elysee Palace himself, Chirac had a knack for connecting with voters, particularly in rural France.

Five years after leaving office, Chirac was found guilty in December 2012 of abusing public funds as Paris mayor, making him the first head of state convicted since Nazi collaborator Marshal Philippe Petain in 1945.

But he served no jail time and the saga did little to tarnish his image.

One of his nicknames was "Houdini", a reference to his knack for managing to escape serious punishment, despite the allegations of misuse of funds.

His defiant opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq brought his relationship with then British Prime Minister Tony Blair to an acrimonious low.

In Europe, Chirac became one of the bloc's main standard bearers. He forged an alliance with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder which brought Europe's two traditional powers closer together but upset some of their European Union partners.

He said of Eastern European countries that supported then-U.S. President George W. Bush's coalition in Iraq that they had "missed a good opportunity to keep quiet."

Chirac was born in 1932 in Paris. He studied at the elite Sciences Po university and ENA civil service academy, and served as an army officer. By 1967, he had become a junior minister and was just 41 when he became prime minister in 1974.

He left the government and by 1977 was elected as Paris's first mayor, a job he would keep for 18 years, until his election as president in 1995. He won a second term in 2002, after a fraught battle with far-right challenger Jean-Marie Le Pen, father of Marine Le Pen.

His electoral campaign then heavily flirted with far-right ideas, especially with one infamous televised allocution where he expressed empathy for any French worker (as in, white) who supposedly has to put up with Muslim neighbors, living with several wives and a dozen of children on public benefits, "not mentioning the noise and the smell."

He was also responsible for the state of emergency and the police repression that followed the riots in Paris' suburbs, after two teenagers got electrocuted as they were trying to escape the police with no wrongdoing in 2005.

In the last years of his life, he suffered from neurological problems and was rarely seen in public. He lived quietly with his wife, Bernadette, in a Paris' Left Bank apartment, and worked on his memoirs.