The former president of France, Jacques Chirac, died aged 86, AFP tweeted.

Jacques Chirac was born on November 29, 1932 in Paris. He served as president of France from 1995 to 2007.

Chirac played a large role in the election campaigns of Charles de Gaulle in 1965 and Georges Pompidou. From the latter he received the nickname “Le bulldozer” for aggressiveness and effectiveness.

From 1977 until his election as president in 1995, he was mayor of Paris (the first mayor of the city for more than a century; the post was restored after the French capital was separated into a separate department, all this time there were mayor posts only in the districts).

On May 16, 2007, Jacques Chirac resigned and left the Champs-Élysées. From that moment, Jacques Chirac became rightfully and for life a member of the Constitutional Council of France,

On December 15, 2011, the former president of France, Jacques Chirac, was sentenced to two years' probation. He was found guilty of abuse of position, trust, illegal profit-taking and embezzlement of public funds in 1990-1995, when he was mayor of Paris. The investigation requested that Chirac be released from responsibility, but justice decided otherwise.

In 2006 Chirac paid a state visit to Armenia to attend the opening ceremony of the French Square in Yerevan.