World Notes FRANCE

When a series of nude billboards began appearing last week, Parisians reacted with confusion rather than shock. Was the naked runner with a rose in his hand advertising a floral delivery service? Were the children, all in the buff, promoting a softer bathroom tissue? And the pregnant woman pressing a rose to her bare breast -- a new perfume?

The nude models supposedly personify the national virtues of liberty, equality and fraternity, and they figure in a complicated advertising campaign for the Socialist Party as it prepares for next year's presidential race against the Conservatives. But the billboards have merely left most passersby befuddled. Gloated Patrick Devedgian, national secretary of Conservative Premier Jacques Chirac's party: "In the provinces that sort of thing leaves them cold."