Jospin accepts Chirac's request to form government during harmonious meeting

PRESIDENT Jacques Chirac did not waste any time cleaning up the mess after his RPR UDF centre right coalition was devastated in Sunday's parliamentary elections.

Final results announced yesterday morning confirmed that the left wing coalition - Socialists, Communists, ecologists and others had won 319 seats to the RPR UDF's 257. The Socialists had increased their seats from 56 in the previous assembly to 240, the Communists from 24 to 38. The ecologists won eight seats.

By contrast, Mr Chirac's own RPR lost 110 seats, going from 241 to 131. His UDF partners did not fare much better, dropping from 203 to 108 deputies.

A third of the Gaullist ministers who stood for parliament - eight out of 25 - were defeated. And in Paris, traditionally a right wing city, the left increased its representation from two to nine out of 21 constituencies.

Mr Alain Juppe, the prime minister whose unpopularity helped drive the RPR-UDF out of power, arrived at the Elysee presidential palace on the dot of 9 a.m. to submit his resignation.

Over on the left bank, his successor, the Socialist leader, Mr Lionel Jospin, who had been celebrating his victory until three in the morning - party workers had long since run out of champagne and canapes - was woken up by an 8.30 a.m. phone call from Mr Chirac's office. At 11 Mr Jospin drove into the Elysee courtyard, looking infinitely more cheerful than Mr Juppe, who had already cleared the premises.

French politics is a small world: it was Mr Juppe who, as foreign minister, refused Mr Jospin an ambassador's post when he found himself estranged from the Socialist Party in 1993. As he left the Elysee, Mr Jospin told journalists: "The President has asked me to the Prime Minister and I have accepted."

A presidency source said their one hour meeting went very well. "The French people would not understand hostility towards the new government," the source said. "We wish them well, even if there are personal reservations."

The new parliament will have 63 women deputies, out of a total of 577. The significant increase, up from 32, is a result of the Socialists 30 per cent quota for women candidates. Fifty one of the female members are from the left wing alliance, 12 from centre right parties. Mr Jospin is expected to name at least five female ministers in a cabinet of 15.

The Communist Party will decide today whether to demand cabinet posts in the Jospin government. Mr Jospin has stressed that although he seeks the support of the Communists - without whom the left fell short of the 289 seats required to pass legislation - the Socialist programme will take precedence.

The election has left the centre right coalition in crisis: it is not clear whether Mr Juppe will continue to lead the RPR, or be replaced by Mr Philippe Seguin (54), the outgoing speaker of parliament.

Mr Seguin was outspoken in his reaction to the election result, which put paid to his own hopes of being the next prime minister, but bowed to it, "cruel as it can he", he said.

The crisis, he said on Sunday, "is that of our whole political system, and that goes for both winners and losers of whom one does not know which to pity more".

AFP adds: The secretary general of the neoGaullist Rally for the Republic (RPR) tendered his resignation yesterday. Mr Jean Francois Mancel, who lost his own seat to a Socialist, offered his resignation to the party leader, Mr Juppe. See also Business and Finance, page 1