He came into the international spotlight as Minister of Foreign Affairs with his opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, one year after his appointment to the office, which culminated with a speech to the United Nations.

After being replaced by François Fillon as prime minister, De Villepin was indicted in connection with the Clearstream affair;[2][3] he was subsequently cleared of charges of complicity in allowing false accusations to proceed against presidential rival Nicolas Sarkozy regarding bribes paid on a sale of warships to Taiwan.

When his mother died, Villepin gave a eulogy "full of the grandest and most sonorous cadences of the French language", wrote The Independent (UK) in 2010.

[9] Villepin studied at the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) and went on to the École nationale d'administration (ENA), France's highly selective post-graduate school which trains its top civil servants.

In addition, the mutual distaste between Villepin and Nicolas Sarkozy, head of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) majority party, is well known.

During mid-2003 Villepin organized the Opération 14 juillet that attempted to rescue his former student, Ingrid Betancourt, who was being held by FARC rebels in Colombia.

He also cracked down on radical Muslim clerics, causing an uproar when he tried to expel Abdelkader Bouziane, an imam alleged to have said to the press that, according to Ancient Islamic texts, adulterous people could be whipped or stoned.

When the decision to expel him was overturned by the courts, because of the journalistic reporting of LyonMag was deemed biased, Villepin pushed a change of the law through Parliament, and Bouziane was sent home.

Villepin's aim was therefore to restore the French people's trust in their government, an achievement for which he publicly set himself a deadline of a hundred days from the appointment of cabinet.

After Pope Benedict XVI was widely chastized for appearing to criticize Islam in a speech on 12 September 2006, French author Robert Redeker came to the pontiff's defense, in response to which he received death threats that forced him and his family to go into hiding.

[11] Some had speculated that Villepin, with his diplomatic experience and the prestige associated with the job of prime minister, would negotiate a new treaty with the European Union, while Sarkozy would run the country at home.

In particular, he was increasingly cited as a possible presidential candidate for 2007, although Nicolas Sarkozy had publicly stated that he himself was giving considerable attention to that election.

Villepin declared that lowering unemployment was the number one objective of his government (which had also been stated by other prime ministers before him, albeit to no avail).

He, as well as the UMP party, believed that France's workforce rules were too rigid and discouraged employment, and that some liberalizing reforms were necessary in order to "correct" the French social model.

On 16 January 2006 he announced a similar kind of work contract (called Contrat première embauche, or CPE) for young people (under 26).

Supporters of the law argued that such probationary arrangements are not unusual in Western countries and that the current system in France discourages employers from hiring people whom they may be unable to fire if they prove unsuitable for the job.

[13] On 20 June 2006, during the questions to government in the National Assembly, Dominique de Villepin accused the head of the Socialist Party François Hollande of cowardice.

[14] Hollande had questioned the Prime Minister about the recent "insider trading" scandal involving the aerospace company EADS and executive Noël Forgeard.

[16] In 2004, French judges were given a list by an anonymous source containing the names of politicians and others who, it was alleged, had deposited kickbacks from a 1991 arms sale to Taiwan into secret accounts at Clearstream, a private bank in Luxembourg.

De Villepin has never held elected office; the French Constitution allows the president to appoint unelected ministers.

[citation needed] Villepin is not the first "unelected" prime minister, even in the relatively short history of the Fifth Republic: notable predecessors include Georges Pompidou, who was a banker before being called to office, and Raymond Barre, who had a previous career as a professor and appointed official, and started an elected career only after being Prime minister.

On the first day of the civil trial for his part in the Clearstream affair, Villepin accused President Sarkozy of pursuing him for political reasons.

[24] He advocated forcefully the Palestinian cause during the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict,[26] at the request of the Qataris, and protested the French legal ban on Islamic facial veils for women in 2014.

Set up by Bulgaria's prime minister Sergei Stanishev, the advisory board was mandated to recommend ways to help the country adjust to EU membership.

Three former ministers, Dominique de Villepin, Michel Barnier and Michèle Alliot-Marie, were suspected of having allowed the exfiltration of the mercenaries responsible for the attack on the Bouaké camp in 2004, killing nine French soldiers.

[33] In the 2017 presidential election, De Villepin endorsed centrist Emmanuel Macron before the first round and not fellow right-winger François Fillon, candidate of The Republicans.

The gallery is located on Hollywood Road in Central, and opened with an inaugural exhibition of work by the Chinese painter Zao Wou-ki.

"[36] Villepin enjoys traveling through the U.S., and has spoken of Route 66 as giving a feeling of the "wide open spaces of America" that signify "dreams and opportunities".