Chirac ends 12 years of power in France with televised address

PARIS (AP) -- Jacques Chirac, in his final presidential appeal to the French, urged his compatriots Tuesday to stay united and proud of the nation he led for 12 years despite uncertainty about France's place in today's world.
"Always stay united," Chirac said in a brief televised address Tuesday night, before the debonair 74-year-old turns over the presidency to conservative Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday.
"A nation is a family. This link that unites us is our most precious asset," he said, sitting in front of French and European Union flags.
He said France should be a nation of equal opportunity and an engine of European integration. Both appeals recalled low points of his tenure: the 2005 riots that laid bare deep-rooted discrimination against France's immigrants, and the French rejection of the EU constitution that Chirac had championed.
Chirac often shone brighter on the global stage than at home, but he made no reference in his parting speech to his dream of a "multi-polar world" less dominated by the United States, or of his steadfast opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, a defining moment of his presidency.
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