Youths clash with police in new French violence

By Matthew Bigg

PARIS (Reuters) – France imposed emergency measures on
Wednesday in 38 suburbs, towns and cities, but in a 14th night
of violence youths clashed with police in the southwestern city
of Toulouse and seven cars were burned.

By 10:30 p.m., however, there were few other confirmed
reports of unrest elsewhere in France. Authorities in the Paris
area, scene of some of the worst violence, said Wednesday
appeared calm compared to previous nights.

Some 350 police officers were on duty in tough
neighborhoods in Toulouse where four of the cars were burned,
authorities said. Three cars were set ablaze in the Val d’Oise
area in the northwest of Paris.

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin published a decree
invoking a 50-year-old law that gives regional government
officials the power to impose nightly curfews against the
rioters, mainly protesting about unemployment and racism.

Authorities in Toulouse have not yet taken advantage of the
emergency measures announced on Tuesday to halt the violence by
white youths as well as French-born citizens of African and
Arab origin.

MAJORITY PUBLIC SUPPORT

A poll in Le Parisien newspaper showed 73 percent support
for the measures and 86 percent of those surveyed said they
were outraged by the violence.

Police and an aide to Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy
said unrest that had spread across many of France’s towns and
cities and shaken the government appeared to be waning.

“We are seeing a sharp drop in hostile acts,” the national
police director, Michel Gaudin, told a news briefing.

A spokesman for the eastern Paris district of
Seine-et-Marne told Reuters: “It’s calm. The trouble is
subsiding.”

Fears of riots erupting in other European countries have
helped push down the value of the euro. Neighboring Belgium and
Germany have been hit by copycat arson incidents but nothing
large-scale.

Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson criticized France’s
response to the violence, saying emergency powers would not
help to resolve the problems.

Major cities covered by the emergency powers include
Marseille, Strasbourg, Lyon, Toulouse and the capital.

But in the Paris suburbs where the unrest erupted on
October 27 with the deaths of two youngsters apparently fleeing
police, the local prefect said he had decided against a curfew
because of a decrease in violence.

The violence swiftly turned into a broader protest against
racism, police treatment and poor job prospects.

Authorities in the Marseille region said children as young
as 10 had been arrested since the beginning of the week.

Economists expect consumer confidence to drop because of
the rioting but say the impact on economic growth and the state
budget is likely be marginal if calm returns soon. They see few
signs of any long-term blow to foreign direct investment.

But Villepin and President Jacques Chirac are feeling a
political impact and are under pressure to respond.

“The prime minister seems to be losing his cool,” Le Monde
said in an unusually harsh editorial, suggesting Villepin “does
not have the nerves that a statesman needs.”

Villepin declined to take questions during parliamentary
question time on Wednesday.

But Sarkozy told deputies some 120 foreigners convicted of
participating in the disturbances would be expelled, including
those with residence permits.

The opposition Socialists have voiced only muted criticism
of the emergency measures, passed in 1955 when Paris feared an
insurgency in its then colony of Algeria could spread to
France. The Socialists used the measures in the mid-1980s to
quell unrest in France’s Pacific territory of New Caledonia.

(Additional reporting by Emmanuel Jarry, Kerstin Gehmlich
in St Denis, Nicolas Fichot in Toulouse and Anna Willard)