French parliament confirms presidential law

VERSAILLES, France, Feb 19 (Reuters) The French parliament passed a constitutional amendment today broadening parliament's power to dismiss a president and allowing the prosecution of heads of state when they leave office.

The measure was one of three amendments voted in a special sitting of the lower house and the Senate in Versailles near Paris and fulfils a 2002 campaign pledge by President Jacques Chirac just weeks before he is due to leave office.

The measure also confirmed the immunity from prosecution of sitting French presidents but ruled the immunity should be lifted once they have left office.

Chirac's pledge followed accusations of corruption levelled against him from his time as mayor of Paris in 1977-95, which he has denied.

The amendment was passed, as expected, by the necessary three-fifths majority, despite objections from significant sections of the ruling centre-right government who say it weakens the constitutional supremacy of the president's office.

Pierre Lellouche and Claude Goasguen, two deputies from the ruling UMP party, said the move amounted to a ''legal putsch'' but with the opposition Socialists abstaining, the measure was adopted by 449 votes to 203.

The law would allow the president to be removed from office ''for failing to carry out his duties in a manner manifestly incompatible with the exercise of his mandate'' by a two-thirds majority of both houses of parliament.

Previously a president could only be removed for treason.

As well as the presidential law, the sitting also confirmed two other constitutional amendments.

One restricts voting rights in a referendum on self determination in the Pacific territory of New Caledonia to inhabitants who were resident before November 1998, a measure intended to calm tensions in the island.

The other anchors the outlawing of the death penalty, abolished in 1981, into the constitution.

Reuters PKS VP0040