The French government on Tuesday declared a state of emergency in riot-hit parts of the country in order to combat the worst outbreak of urban unrest since the May 1968 student revolt.
Meeting in crisis session under the chairmanship of President Jacques Chirac, the cabinet invoked a 50 year-old law originally drawn up at the start of the Algerian war, which permits the declaration of curfews, house-searches and a ban on public meetings. The measure will come into effect at midnight (2300 GMT) Tuesday after the government has issued a decree setting out the geographical limits for the state of emergency.
In remarks conveyed by his spokesman, Chirac said he had decided to "give the forces of law and order supplementary means in order to assure the protection of our fellow citizens and their property... It is necessary to hasten a return to calm."
It was the toughest response to date to nearly two weeks of rioting in the country's high-immigration suburbs which has left more than 6,000 cars burned, public and private property destroyed, tens of policemen injured and one civilian death.
More than 1,500 people - mainly Arab and black youngsters - have been detained.
The crisis is the worst to hit France for decades, and has thrown into stark relief the failure of its policies - based on the theory of republican equality - for integrating millions of immigrants and their children from its former African colonies.
Acknowledging the accumulation of social and economic handicaps in the Arab community, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin also announced Tuesday a series of new measures designed to facilitate access to the jobs market and stamp out racial discrimination.
"Our collective responsibility is to make difficult areas the same sort of territory as others in the republic," Villepin told the National Assembly.
Among the steps are the creation of an anti-discrimination agency, the allocation of 20,000 state-paid jobs for inhabitants of poor suburbs, an extra 100 million euros (120 million dollars) for associations working there, and the creation of 15 new special economic zones with tax-breaks for employers.
Monday night showed no let-up to the unrest, with 1,200 cars torched and 300 arrests, but the focus switched away from the capital to regional towns and cities, notably Toulouse in the south-west where a youth had his hand blown off when he picked up a tear-gas grenade.
In eastern France, schools, a library, a church and several vehicles - including five buses - were incinerated, and a German TV crew was pelted with rocks. In Auxerre, south-east of the French capital, 15 people were hospitalised with breathing problems after a blaze in a cellar forced them to evacuate a building, and in the central city of Saint-Etienne a four-storey apartment block was evacuated when flames from burning vehicles spread.
However the chief of the national police service Michel Gaudin said there were signs the violence was fading, "allowing us to see a glimmer of light."
The 1955 emergency powers law was enacted at the start of disturbances in then French-controlled Algeria that triggered the six year war of independence.
It permits state-appointed governors - or prefects - to "forbid the movement of people and vehicles in places and times fixed by decree" and ban "meetings likely to provoke or fuel disorder".
The law also allows the authorities to "order house searches at any time of day or night" and to control "press and publications of all kinds" - though Villepin told parliament this last article would not be invoked.
Article six allows the interior minister to issue house-arrests for people "whose activity is dangerous for public safety."
There was strong criticism of the government for resorting to an emergency measure that recalls one of the worst moments in the country's modern history and has particularly painful associations for Algerians, who were the original law's main targets.
The left-leaning Le Monde newspaper said that "exhuming a 1955 law sends to the youth of the suburbs a message of astonishing brutality: that after 50 years France intends to treat them exactly as it did their grandparents."
"I did not think they would dare to do it. It is really a provocation for those of us who lived through the humiliations, the torture, the round-ups during the war of liberation," said Abdelhakim Bouziane, 79, an Algerian living in the town of Mantes-la-Jolie west of Paris.
Three towns - the Paris suburbs of Raincy and Savigny-sur-Orge and the historic town of Orleans on the river Loire - have separately declared overnight curfews for teenagers in order to restore calm in their poor neighbourhoods.
The violence was sparked by the accidental deaths of two teenagers on October 27 who were electrocuted in a sub-station where they had hidden from police. After several days of rioting outside Paris, the violence spread to the rest of the country over the last days.
The protesters say rioting is the only way they have to express their frustration at a life of misery, joblessness and discrimination.
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