Curfews looming as rioting in France grows more intense

By Aussiegirl

Let's see less "looming" and more action. All this looks like is more appeasement. Who knows, de Villepin may even be composing a poem as we speak.

Curfews looming as rioting in France grows more intense

Paris - The French government is to hold an extraordinary cabinet meeting early Tuesday and take steps to enable police chiefs throughout France to impose curfews as countrywide rioting and arson continued for the 12th night, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said late Monday.


'This violence is unacceptable,' Villepin said on TF 1 television after the unrest reached a new level of intensity late Sunday and early Monday, when 36 police officers were injured and 395 people were taken into custody.

'The answer of the state will be firm and just,' Villepin said.

Part of that answer, he said, was the calling up of an additional 1,500 police reservists to be sent to the affected areas, raising the number of police deployed to deal with the disturbances to 9,500.

Villepin went on to say that the government would initiate measures to improve the education, employment and lodging conditions of Arab and African families living in the impoverished suburban public housing estates where most of the unrest has taken place.

He also said the government would restore funds it had struck from NGOs and local associations working in the troubled neighbourhoods, an implicit admission that the policies of the centre-right government of his predecessor, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, contributed to the current crisis.