Former French PM lashes out against Sarkozy

PARIS, Sept 7 (Reuters) French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been accused of surrounding himself with ''bootlickers'' and ''yes-men'' by a former prime minister bitter at an investigation into his role in a political scandal.

Dominique de Villepin, prime minister under former President Jacques Chirac, has kept silent in public since Sarkozy's triumph in the May presidential election.

But an appointment next week to be questioned by judges over his role in a smear scandal against Sarkozy and the opportunity provided by the launch of his latest book on Napoleon Bonaparte have prompted him to speak out.

In a flurry of interviews over the past week, he has protested his innocence and made a series of pointed attacks on Sarkozy, although he has not directly accused the president of involvement in the wrong he says he has suffered.

''I don't believe in conspiracies but in this complicated affair ... I have been the victim of an injustice,'' he told LCI Television today.

In between his declarations of innocence and comments on his Napoleon book ''The Black Sun of Power, 1796-1807'', Villepin has delivered a stinging set of barbs against the man who once served as interior minister in his government.

He has warned about toadying ''courtiers'' and compared the hyperactive Sarkozy to the ridiculous parvenu hero of Moliere's 17th century classic ''Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme''.

''You don't move a country forward when you're surrounded by yes-men and bootlickers and courtesans,'' the aristocratic Villepin told French radio this week.

''THIS ISN'T RUPTURE, IT'S RAGE'' With the opposition Socialists reduced to near impotence by internal disputes and backbiting, Villepin's attacks have been among the fiercest faced by Sarkozy since the election.

Sarkozy has not responded directly and his spokesman David Martinon said the president had ''not had the leisure to read, hear or listen to the remarks of Dominique de Villepin''.

But the attacks have increased interest in what may come out of Villepin's interview with judges on September 13.

''One thing is clear,'' the weekly Le Point said. ''Between Sarko and Villepin, this isn't a rupture any more, it's rage.'' Villepin and Sarkozy were widely considered rivals to succeed Chirac until Sarkozy surged ahead in the race last year and the story of their supposed hatred of each other filled acres of newsprint and piles of books.

Much of Villepin's anger has come from his feeling of being unjustly treated in the Clearstream affair, a tangled story of smears and spies linked to a 1991 arms sale to Taiwan.

He is suspected of using French intelligence services to try to dig up dirt on Sarkozy, whose name turned up on a faked list of secret accounts purportedly held at Luxembourg-based securities clearing house Clearstream.

He has always denied improper involvement, saying that when he was foreign and later interior minister, he ordered officials to look into claims that Sarkozy was linked to the affair as his ministerial responsibilities demanded.

Judges quickly cleared Sarkozy of any involvement and the focus of their investigation then switched to who was behind the anonymous denunciation that triggered the affair. But Villepin says it had nothing to do with any cabinet intrigue.

''I will prove that this affair is not a political affair,'' Villepin said today.

REUTERS PDT RN2045