PARIS -- Socialist Francois Mitterrand overwhelmed conservative Prime Minister Jacques Chirac in Sunday's presidential election, winning a second seven-year term and positioning himself to form a governing coalition in Parliament.
Mitterrand, crowning his political career, polled 53.91 percent in the second round of the presidential vote to Chirac's 46.09 percent, with 98 percent of the vote counted, the Interior Ministry said. It was the most lopsided presidential victory since 1969.
The 71-year-old Socialist is the first president to win a second term by direct election since the Fifth Republic began in 1958. Gen. Charles de Gaulle, author of the current French constitution, was elected in 1958 by an electoral college and re-elected in 1965 by direct voting.
Commentators said Mitterrand's showing would enable him to assemble a center-left government under a prime minister he had promised to name within 24 hours of re-election. Since 1986, Chirac has commanded a right-wing majority in Parliament.
Political experts had expected a better showing by the conservative prime minister after he helped bring home the last three French hostages held by Moslem fundamentalists in Lebanon last week.
In a victory speech at the central town of Chateau Chinon, Mitterrand pledged 'to unite all the French who wish it.'
'There is too much anguish, too much difficulty, too much uncertainty for too many in our society for us to forget that our first duty is that of national solidarity,' Mitterrand said.
He pledged to support Third World development, promote disarmament and fight youth unemployment. He said he would seek dialogue in New Caledonia, where separatists on the South Pacific island are seeking independence from France.
'I will act, to say the very least, in faithfulness to the principles of the republic. Liberty, equality and respect for others, the refusal of exclusions that we also call fraternity, still sustain the hopes of men,' he said in a promise to resist the extremism of the far-right National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen.
'Let us love France and serve her,' Mitterrand said.
Thousands of jubilant Socialist supporters celebrated at the Place de La Republique and the Place de La Bastille, the same square where they gathered when Mitterrand won his first term in 1981.
Chirac acknowledged defeat at his Left Bank campaign headquarters soon after exit poll projections were announced.
'The French have decided to confide the responsibility for the state to Francois Mitterrand,' he said. 'And I bow to their choice.'
'I wish good luck to France and good luck to the French,' he said.
Commentators closely studied right-wing and centrist politicians' statements to guage Mitterrand's chances of governing without dissolving the National Assembly dominated since 1986 by the right wing.
Chirac made clear an end had come to the 'cohabitation' arrangement under which he and Mitterrand governed together after the conservatives won control of the National Assembly in 1986 parliamentary elections.
But observers said a new era of coalitions might now begin in which the reshuffled government -- minus Chirac -- would strike a balance between Socialist and conservative policies.
Mitterrand needs to add 75 votes to the 214 held by the Socialists to achieve a working majority in the 577-seat National Assembly. The Communists hold 35 seats but are uncertain allies for the president.
Instant polls found 53 to 60 percent of the electorate thought Mitterrand should call new elections to seek his own governing majority. But some leading centrists appeared willing to govern with him.
An estimated 84.7 percent of the French electorate of 38.32 million turned out for the vote, half a percent less than 1981, when Mitterrand polled 51.75 percent against former President Valery Giscard d'Estaing to end two decades of conservative rule. The polls closed at 8 p.m. (2 p.m. EDT).
A violent clash between suspected leftists and right-wing demonstrators took place in Paris. Authorities said scores of masked youths brandishing iron bars attacked demonstrators supporting Le Pen, injuring eight people.
Le Pen, 59, lost his bid for the presidency in April's first round of voting, receiving 14.39 percent to place fourth. But the one-eyed former parachutist's anti-immigration platform cast a shadow over the campaign.
Police arrested 10 people in the attack, including four carrying iron bars, and identified them as supporters of the Jewish Combat Organization, a Jewish self-defense group.
In New Caledonia, Melanesian separatists erected roadblocks and torched a bus used by voters, wounding the driver with shotgun pellets. In nearby Vanua, formerly the New Hebrides, Melanesians supporters of their New Caledonian counterparts cordoned off the French Embassy at the capital of Port Vila and prevented 200 French expatriates from voting.
In the first round election April 24, Mitterrand was endorsed as favorite with 34.1 percent of the votes. The conservative Chirac, 55, managed a disappointing 19.94 percent.
But the prime minister last week engineered a series of dramatic policy stunts that critics said were aimed at bolstering his support toward the end of the campaign.
Chirac was credited for obtaining the release of two French diplomats and a journalist Wednesday from the pro-Iranian Islamic Jihad group. They were the last three French hostages in Lebanon and had spent three years in captivity.
The United States, with nine hostages in Lebanon, was concerned about what concessions were made for journalist Jean-Paul Kauffmann and diplomats Marcel Carton and Marcel Fontaine. Chirac denied paying a ransom but said he would restore diplomatic ties with Tehran.
Thursday, French police commandos stormed a cave at Ouvea in New Caledonia, freeing 22 agents and a state prosecutor from Melanesian separatists. Nineteen islanders and two French soldiers were killed.
France's best-known woman spy, Capt. Dominique Prieur, returned home Friday from exile at the remote Pacific atoll of Hao. New Zealand protested that she had not served the agreed period of detention after her conviction for involvement in the July 10, 1985, bombing of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior at Auckland harbor. Chirac said Prieur was allowed to return because she is pregnant.
Mitterrand and Chirac attended ceremonies Sunday morning at the Arc de Triomphe to mark the anniversary of the May 8, 1945, Allied victory in Europe. The two men shook hands coldly and Chirac stood back when Mitterrand laid a wreath at the memorial to the Unknown Soldier.
Mitterrand then traveled to Chateau Chinon, where he was mayor from 1959 to 1981, and cast his vote after having lunch with friends and watching part of a rugby match on television. Chirac flew south to his hometown of Correzes near Limoges to vote to cheers from some 300 supporters.
In addition to Le Pen, six other candidates were eliminated in the first round of the presidential election, including former Prime Minister Raymond Barre.
