France's Two Top Parties in All-Out War over Sarkozy Phone Taps

France's ruling Socialists and the main opposition party of Nicolas Sarkozy were locked in a no-holds-barred verbal war Friday after the ex-president compared the court-ordered tapping of his phones to spying by East Germany's Stasi police.

The spat came just ahead of local elections due over the next two weekends and was sparked by a vitriolic newspaper piece by Sarkozy, which drew a strong rebuke from President Francois Hollande.

Sarkozy referred to the feared communist-era secret police in a piece for Le Figaro, in which he broke a long silence on mounting corruption claims against him that are undermining his chance of a comeback.

"This is not an extract of the marvelous film 'The Lives of Others' on East Germany and the activities of the Stasi. It's not the actions of a dictator against his opponents. This is France," he wrote.

Hollande, who took over France's presidency in 2012, immediately lambasted his predecessor saying: "To raise the idea that our country, our republic, might not be founded on liberty is to introduce a doubt that is baseless."

"Any comparison with dictatorships is obviously intolerable," Hollande said.

There was sweeping outrage in both camps Friday.

"I have the feeling while reading Nicolas Sarkozy's piece that overcome by a fit of rage, he wants to destroy everything to protect himself," Interior Minister Manuel Valls said.

"I find what he has written scandalous and shameful, shameful for all the victims of the Stasi," said Emmanuelle Cosse, the secretary general of the Greens party, the Socialists partner in government.

"People died because they were kept under surveillance, manipulated or threatened by the Statsi. And here we have a (former) head of state who is being tapped in connection with legal investigations," she said.

Sarkozy has been embroiled in a tangled web of corruption scandals culminating with allegations in the press this month that he attempted to pervert the course of justice -- information reportedly gleaned from excerpts of tapped phone conversations with his lawyer.

The publication this week of more detailed extracts of the conversations was seen by many as a nail in the coffin of his alleged ambition to stage a political comeback.

Francois Fillon, who served as Sarkozy's prime minister, said the former president was justified "in wanting his rights to be respected" and that the phone-tapping was a breach of the rule of law.

Former Sarkozy aide Henri Guaino defended the outburst as the reaction "of a man who is attacked every day."

Sarkozy slammed the leaks as politically motivated, rejected the graft cases against him and denied any desire to return to politics.

Judges started tapping Sarkozy's phones last year after opening a formal investigation into allegations he accepted up to 50 million euros ($70 million) in cash from late Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi for his 2007 election campaign.

They unwittingly stumbled upon the conversations later leaked to the media, which allegedly suggested Sarkozy got a friendly judge to try to influence the outcome of legal deliberations in one of France's highest courts in a completely separate case.

These proceedings at the Court of Cassation centered on the seizure of Sarkozy's diaries by judges probing the alleged illegal financing of his UMP party by France's richest woman, L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt. Charges against Sarkozy have been dropped in that case.