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France declares state of emergency

* De Villepin acknowledges discrimination in suburbs

PARIS: A government-declared 12-day state of emergency was poised to go into effect in riot-torn France at midnight on Tuesday, paving the way for curfews in cities and towns after 12 nights of the country’s worst civil unrest in decades.

But as President Jacques Chirac introduced the extraordinary security measures on Tuesday, the nation’s police chief said that violence was showing signs of abating and the prime minister reached out to immigrant suburbs where the rioting began.

The Interior Ministry said that there was no centralised list of towns and cities that would be affected, because curfew measures were being drawn up locally.

The violence started on October 27 as a localised riot in a northeast Paris suburb angry over the accidental deaths of two teenagers, of Mauritanian and Tunisian descent, electrocuted while hiding from police in a power substation. It has grown into a nationwide insurrection by disillusioned suburban youths, many of them French-born children of immigrants from France’s former territories. France’s suburbs have long been neglected, and their youth complain of a lack of jobs and widespread discrimination.

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, tacitly acknowledging that France has failed to live up to its egalitarian ideals, said that discrimination was a “daily and repeated” reality in tough suburbs, feeding the frustration of youths made to feel that they don’t belong in France. “France is wounded. It does not recognise itself in these devastated streets and neighbourhoods, in this outburst of hatred and of violence that vandalises and kills,” Villepin said at an impassioned parliamentary debate on Tuesday where lawmakers also spoke frankly about France’s failings. “The return to order is the absolute priority. We must be lucid: the republic is at a moment of truth. The effectiveness of our integration model is in question,” the prime minister said. He called the riots “a warning” and “an appeal”.

Images of French teenagers from North and West African immigrant families pelting riot police with stones and gasoline bombs – reminiscent of Palestinian youths attacking Israeli patrols – have struck chords in the Muslim world. Egyptian daily Al-Massaie referred to the riots as “the intifada of the poor”.

The northern French city of Amiens said that it planned a curfew for minors under age 16, who must be accompanied by adults from 10pm to 6am The town also planned to forbid the sale of gasoline in cans to minors.

Curfew violators face up to two months in jail and/or a $4,400 fine, the Justice Ministry said. Minors face one month in jail. ap

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