PARIS, April 15— Louis de Guiringaud, Foreign Minister in the late 1970's under President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, committed suicide in his Paris home today, the police said. He was 71 years old.
The police said Mr. de Guiringaud had been hospitalized recently for a nervous breakdown. From 1972 to 1976, he was France's permanent representative at the United Nations. Mr. de Guiringaud was appointed Foreign Minister under Premier Raymond Barre in August 1976 and served until November 1978. He retired from a long foreign service career the following year.
Duty in Turkey and Syria
Mr. de Guiringaud began his career in 1938, with assignments in Turkey and Syria. In 1943, he left German-occupied France after two years of active involvement in the Resistance and went to Algiers, at which point he was dismissed from the foreign service by the Vichy Government. In Algiers, he headed the staff of the Commissioner for Foreign Affairs of the Free French government, Rene Massigli. In 1944, he rejoined the French Army in Italy with a Moroccan regiment. He was seriously wounded in 1945 in Alsace.
From 1949 to 1952, he was director of political affairs for the French High Commission in Germany. Mr. de Guiringaud was born on Oct. 12, 1911 in Limoges, and held degrees in law and a diploma from the Ecole des Sciences Politiques. During his career, Mr. de Guiringaud served as ambassador to Ghana, Algeria and Japan, and was consul general in San Francisco from 1952 to 1955. He also served as director of Moroccan and Tunisian affairs at the Foreign Ministry in Paris.
After his three-year tour of duty in San Francisco, Mr. de Guiringaud was called to New York to become deputy to Herve Alphand, then the French permanent representative to the United Nations.
Mr. Alphand's successor, Bernard Cornu-Gentille, fell ill in the fall of 1956, and Mr. de Guiringaud occupied the President's chair at the Security Council at the time of the invasion of Egypt by Israel, France and Britain in November 1956.
