DSK unlikely to have role in France

PARIS -- Months of lurid media coverage about Dominique Strauss-Kahn's nine-minute encounter with a New York City hotel maid and other sexual affairs make it hard to imagine the former International Monetary Fund chief taking a major public role in France in the near future.

The dismissal of the attempted rape and assault charges -- sparing him a messy court battle and the risk of a long prison term -- was cheered in advance by his Socialist Party allies in France.

Yet it is too late for him to enter the 2012 French presidential race that he was once pegged to win, and he may be too politically radioactive to take a role in the left's campaign or to hold a government post should it win the April election.

Strauss-Kahn's chief problem is that many everyday French people now feel they know too much tawdry detail about his private life to want him as a leader.

An opinion poll by Ipsos carried out on Aug. 19-20 found only 28 percent of respondents had a positive opinion of Strauss-Kahn, down from 32 percent in July, and 61 percent had an unfavorable view of him, up from 57 percent in July.

In Paris, dinner parties are now spiced up with tales of Strauss-Kahn's extramarital sex life.

"What I think has become his biggest handicap, because it's insurmountable, is that whereas before he was a person who was reassuring for the French, he now has the image of a fragile man and someone who could be a concern for voters," said Herve Gattegno, editor of French current affairs weekly Le Point.

Strauss-Kahn may opt to bypass politics altogether and seek an international role in helping resolve global economic problems and the sovereign debt crisis that threatens to engulf Europe.

Tuesday, he looked emotionally drained as he told the media outside his TriBeCa town house that he was looking forward to coming home to France and "resuming something of a more normal life" after settling some U.S. affairs.

"The big unknown today is whether he will be permanently damaged by this affair, and even he can't know that," Gattegno said.

The Socialists gather this weekend in the seaside town of La Rochelle for their annual congress and are unlikely to want the event to be hijacked by talk of Strauss-Kahn's return.

They may be wary of getting too close to him while other legal cases are unresolved, including a civil case brought by hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo and an inquiry in France over allegations by writer Tristane Banon of an attempted assault.

Banon's lawyer, David Koubbi, said the support for Strauss-Kahn from Socialists was "crassly indecent," and Banon's mother, Anne Mansouret, who herself had a brief affair with Strauss-Kahn, said she was "deeply indignant" at the U.S. charges against him collapsing.