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Youths clash with police in new French violence

Posted on: Wednesday, 9 November 2005, 17:47 CST

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)

Source: REUTERS

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