Since handing power to Mr Sarkozy in June 2007, Mr Chirac had until now refrained from criticising the man who betrayed him in the mid-1990s and rubbished him in the run up to his presidential victory.
But in “The Presidential Time”, which charts his 12 years in power from 1995 to 2007, the 78-year-old makes it crystal clear what he thinks of his fellow Right-winger.
The two men, he says, don’t “share the same vision of France”. Rather than bringing people together, Mr Sarkozy, he claims, is bent on “stigmatising, exacerbating antagonises and setting one category against another”.
In extracts released to the French press yesterday, he gives a nod to Mr Sarkozy’s “boundless energy, and tactical and media skills”, but brands him “nervous, impetuous” and disloyal — the reason, he says, he never made him prime minister.
The book’s release next Monday comes less than three months before Mr Chirac’s trial on charges of illegal party funding while mayor of Paris.
In the memoirs, he claims that many corruption allegations against him were “founded on rumour, more or less orchestrated press campaigns” and “unscrupulously fabricated claims”.
He all but accuses Mr Sarkozy of being behind at least one smear campaign in 1995, even if “I have always lacked proof that it was initiated by the budget minister (Mr Sarkozy), as people assured me,” he said.
He says that as president he chose to rise above the “petty provocative phrases” Mr Sarkozy aimed at him while in government, such as when he mocked Mr Chirac’s love of Sumo saying: “’How can one be fascinated by those fights of obese guys with brylcreemed buns?”
To react he says, would not have been “worthy of a president”.
Clearly sarcastic, he says he was “deeply touched” when Mr Sarkozy failed to mention him once in his presidential acceptance speech.
He makes no mention of Mr Sarkozy’s presidency, but does heap praise on his likely Socialist rival for re-election, François Hollande, saying he acted “as a true head of state”.
A large part of the 624-page book is reportedly given up to foreign policy.
Regarding his famous opposition to the 2003 Iraq invasion, Mr Chirac recounts his “courteous” telephone conversation with George W Bush over what he calls the US president’s “quasi-mystical mission”.
“Here’s exactly what will happen. First of all, you’ll succeed in taking Baghdad without much difficulty,” he warned, correctly predicting that then the country would disintegrate into chaos.
He has far more “immediate empathy” with Bill Clinton, saying he phoned him several times a week during the Monika Lewinsky sex scandal, fearing the embattled former US president would “take his own life out of despair”.
While the book appears to gloss over many of his failings, Mr Chirac does concede he shares “my part of responsibility” in National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen reaching the second round of presidential elections in 2002.
