Scandal Has Dumas Fighting for His Seat : France: A gift that backfired makes it tougher for the Mitterrand ally in an already dicey election for the ruling Socialists.

SARLAT, France —  Like many of his colleagues in the embattled Socialist Party, longtime Foreign Minister Roland Dumas found himself far behind in his race to keep his seat in the National Assembly, France’s lower house of Parliament.

Hoping to give his troubled campaign a last-minute boost, Dumas announced this month that he had obtained private funds necessary to buy a new $2-million CAT scanner for the regional public hospital here in Sarlat, the French goose liver capital and Dumas’ electoral base in southwest France.

But the beau geste quickly backfired on the 73-year-old lawyer and close friend of President Francois Mitterrand. His main opponent in the election, local politician Jean-Jacques de Peretti, 46, attacked Dumas for accepting the money from a widowed Syrian heiress with whom Dumas was rumored to be romantically linked.

Interviewed briefly Thursday at a local television station, where he engaged in a testy debate with De Peretti, Dumas denied having romantic ties with Nahed Talas Ojjeh, 30, the daughter of powerful Syrian Defense Minister Mustafa Talas and widow of the billionaire Saudi arms merchant Akram Ojjeh.

“Totally false,” said Dumas, “There are no such relations between me and this woman.”

Sexual relationships seldom play a role in French politics. The standard line here is that if Gary Hart had been a candidate in France instead of the United States, he would have been elected easily.

However, because of Dumas’ critical role in foreign affairs and France’s historic role in the Middle East, particularly in Syria, the controversy has international implications that range far beyond this hardscrabble region of rocky river valleys and limestone escarpments in Perigord.

Instead of a crutch for his crippled campaign, the “scanner scandal” has turned into a liability for Dumas. And it is yet another example of the electoral problems the Socialists face before the final round of parliamentary elections Sunday.

The Socialists, who have governed France for 10 of the past 12 years, trail far behind an alliance of moderate-right parties, Union for France, after last Sunday’s first round of voting.

In the final round, Union for France candidates are expected to gain four out of five seats in the new Parliament, an unprecedented sweep for the right over the sagging left.

So certain is the anticipated rightist rout that the Socialist candidates have been forced in recent days to assume a defensive stance. Speaking with Socialist ministers at the Elysee Palace, Mitterrand reportedly warned of urban riots in the poorer suburbs of Paris if the conservatives win with a crushing majority.

At a meeting in the suburb of Conflans-Ste.-Honorine, where he faces a close reelection battle, former Socialist Prime Minister Michel Rocard warned of a “one-legged” Parliament with no real opposition.

“Overwhelming dominance by the right is bad for the republic,” said Dumas in the debate in Perigord, a region that traditionally has voted for the left but recently has turned to mainstream conservative parties.

In the first round, Dumas won only 22% of the vote, compared with more than 44% for De Peretti, the mayor of Sarlat and a member of the neo-Gaullist Rally for the Republic Party headed by former Prime Minister Jacques Chirac. In 1988, Dumas easily won 55% of the vote against the same opponent.

Aided by French newspaper accounts and a photograph in Paris Match magazine showing Dumas kissing Nahed Ojjeh’s hand, De Peretti pounded on the scanner issue throughout the campaign, even dragging out U.S. intelligence reports linking the Syrian army--under the direct command of Mustafa Talas--to lucrative international drug deals in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon.

“I think it is regrettable,” De Peretti said, glaring accusingly at Dumas during their television debate, “that a member of government, a friend of the president of France, has to go to Syria to get money for a scanner for our community.”

For her part, Ojjeh said she was “scandalized by the political exploitation of this humanitarian act.” She said the scanner gift was one of several medical equipment purchases made for French hospitals by the Liechtenstein-based foundation named after her father.

Ojjeh also said that the timing of the pledge to pay for the scanner, coming as it did immediately before the election, was coincidental. She insisted that the money did not come from Syria but from her husband, who died in 1991.

The widow, who has an apartment in Paris, denied that the scanner was an indirect campaign contribution to Dumas. The distinction is important because a new French campaign law limits spending in parliamentary races to $100,000 per candidate.

Although he made his fortune in Paris as a lawyer, Dumas had territorial claims in the Perigord region because his father was a famous Resistance fighter there who was executed by a German firing squad during World War II. Dumas himself, like his longtime friend Mitterrand, was a decorated Resistance fighter who served time in a German prison camp.

During his years as foreign minister, the people of Perigord were proud to see their parliamentary deputy meeting with world leaders on the evening news. But while Dumas was busy on the world scene, he was neglecting his home turf. And De Peretti, an activist mayor, was filling the gap. Now the promises of the new hospital scanner may not be enough to save Dumas on Sunday.

“Four weeks before the election he finally parachutes in and struts around,” commented Sarlat butcher Gerard Maleville, 38. “When he saw he was losing, he brings out the scanner. The scanner is fine, but is the money clean?”