of Rwanda’s Hutu majority government. During his time in office, France approved a bill which prohibited postmenopausal pregnancy, which Douste-Blazy said was "...immoral as well as dangerous to the health of mother and child." Douste-Blazy stayed at the ministry until the 1995 presidential election. In March 1994, he was elected at Hautes-Pyrénées's General Council. He became general secretary of the CDS in December and Government's spokesman one month later. Minister of Culture, 1995–1997 In May 1995, after the election of Jacques Chirac as President of France, a candidacy he was backing, Douste-Blazy was nominated Minister of Culture. In June, he was also re-elected Mayor of Lourdes then, five months later, elected general secretary of Democratic Force, the party which replaced the CDS . In June 1997, the overwhelming defeat of the Presidential Majority during legislative election made him lose his position as Minister of Culture, but he remained deputy of Hautes-Pyrénées and became president of the UDF parliamentary group at the French National Assembly. During the election campaign he was badly hurt when a mentally unstable man stabbed him in the back as he was campaigning in Lourdes. It turned out that the Minister's assailant was an Albanian refugee who had already tried to attack Mr Douste-Blazy in 1992. At the head of the centrist parliamentary group, he was often opposed to the UDF party leader François Bayrou. Indeed, while this one advocated the emancipation of the UDF towards its Gaullist allies, Douste-Blazy proposed the union of the right-wing parties behind President Chirac. Mayor of Toulouse, 2001–2004 Seeking one of the country's most important municipal seats, Douste-Blazy narrowly won the election for Mayor of Toulouse in 2001, which saw the left making its best showing in decades. Once in office, he had to deal with a reinvigorated political opposition, as well as with the dramatic explosion of the AZF plant in late 2001. Douste-Blazy supported Jacques Chirac in the two rounds of the 2002 presidential election, in spite of the candidacy of François Bayrou. Consequently, he participated to the unification of some right-wing groups in the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) and appeared as a possible Prime Minister. However, once re-elected, President Chirac choose Jean-Pierre Raffarin and Philippe Douste-Blazy refused to resign from its mayoralty to be minister. The same year, he changed of constituency and was elected deputy for Haute-Garonne département. After the electoral crash of the UMP