PARIS - FORMER French president Jacques Chirac settles old scores in his memoirs released this week but avoids any mention of the corruption scandal for which he has been ordered to stand trial.

'Every Step Should Be a Goal' goes on sale in bookstores on Thursday, less than a week after a judge said the 76-year-old statesman should be sent to the dock for diverting public money during his time as Paris mayor.

The 500-page book is the first of a two-volume autobiography tracing his childhood years in Correze, deep in rural France, and his extraordinary rise to become a pivotal figure of the Fifth Republic. Excerpts of the autobiography were published in Le Parisien daily and other French media just as Mr Chirac was set to make a round of interviews to promote the book and face questions about the corruption charges.

His years as president from 1995 to 2007 will be the focus of the second volume, but the first book is already shaping up to become a bestseller with some 230,000 copies up for sale.

A secretive, enigmatic leader whose career spanned more than three decades, Mr Chirac takes a few sharp swipes at fellow politicians in his memoirs and makes some surprising revelations about his personal life.

The ex-president expresses disappointment with his future successor Nicolas Sarkozy, then a 'nervous, overzealous and eager for action' minister who backed rival Edouard Balladur for the presidency in 1995. But his most bitter remarks target former president Valery Giscard d'Estaing, whom he served as prime minister at the age of 42. -- AFP