Former French Prime Minister Raymond Barre dies

PARIS, Aug 25 (Reuters) Former French Prime Minister Raymond Barre, who helped set Europe on its road to a single currency, died today.

He was 83.

Barre was plucked from the obscurity of being a backroom technocrat and thrust into frontline politics when then President Valery Giscard d'Estaing made him prime minister in August 1976, dubbing him ''France's best economist''.

Taking over the premiership from Jacques Chirac, Barre held the post until the victory of the Socialists under Francois Mitterrand in 1981.

His association with Giscard dated back to the 1960s when, as European Commissioner in charge of economic and financial affairs, Barre drew up the first proposal for European monetary cooperation, adopted by leaders at the Hague in 1969.

It was during Barre's tenure as prime minister and finance minister that France and Germany rekindled the idea of currency union by launching Europe's exchange rate mechanism.

But he was not popular at home in a country suffering the after effects of the first oil price shock. He enforced a tough anti-inflation plan and cut thousands of jobs in loss-making industries such as steel and coal.

After his days in office he defended his record, earning a reputation among critics for obstinacy and arrogance.

''The French must understand that my policies were right. It's not up to me to change,'' Barre once said.

He had been ill for some time and went into hospital in April to receive treatment for a heart condition.

''Mr Raymond Barre died this night, August 25, at Val-de-Grace hospital,'' his family said in a statement.

Barre was born in the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion on April 12, 1924, into a well-to-do Roman Catholic family.

HIGHEST EXAMINATION He moved to France in 1946 to study economics in Paris and passed the Aggregation, France's highest academic examination.

Seemingly set for a career as an economics professor, Barre was invited to become a senior official in the Industry Ministry from 1959-62 during President Charles de Gaulle's era in power.

After another spell at university, he moved in 1967 to Brussels to become Vice-President of the European Commission with responsibility for economic and financial affairs.

But a political career was still far from his mind, and he turned down an offer of a safe parliamentary seat in 1973. He did not run for parliament until 1978, winning a seat in France's second city Lyon, where he later became mayor.

He joined the cabinet in 1976 as foreign trade minister under Chirac, then serving his first term as prime minister. When Chirac resigned, it was the then largely unknown Barre who was called on to fill the gap.

''France has lost a great economist, a politician resolutely committed to the modernisation of his country and a great European,'' Chirac said in a statement today.

Barre, who married and had two sons, enjoyed listening to Mozart and watching Westerns.

REUTERS RN RAI1320