French President scuttles plan for a world's fair

French President Francois Mitterrand abandoned plans to hold a Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1989. He blamed the hostility of city authorities to the project.

The neo-Gaullist mayor of Paris, Jacques Chirac, opposed the multimillion-dollar exhibition on grounds that it was too expensive and would disrupt the capital.

The loss of the exhibition was a setback for Mr. Mitterrand, who had made it a personal project, political sources said. The fair would have celebrated the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution and the centenary of the 1889 world's fair, for which the Eiffel Tower was built.