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France promises jobs as violence simmers

SAINT-DENIS, France - France's prime minister pledged Monday to find more jobs for youths from poor suburbs, where unrest continued to simmer and a guard at a high school suffered a fatal heart attack trying to extinguish blazing cars.

The guard collapsed and died southwest of Paris in Trappes, one of about 300 cities and towns hit this month by three weeks of rioting, arson and other violence.

The violence has abated but sporadic arson attacks continue. Police say dozens of cars are torched on a typical night in France's depressed suburbs, where frustrations over unemployment and discrimination run high among many youths from immigrant families.

On Sunday, youths in a public housing project in the eastern city of Colmar threw stones at firefighters called to extinguish burning scooters, smashing the windshield of the rescuers' vehicle, regional spokesman Jean-Christophe Schneider said.

At a national meeting of job counselors to discuss government strategies for helping minority youths, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin called it "unacceptable" that minorities faced job discrimination. But he said that France's economic outlook was improving and the jobless rate decreasing.

"I am not asking you to see things through rose-tinted glasses, you are too close to the realities, you know too well the difficulties of everyday life, but all these indications are cause for optimism," he told the audience in the northern Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis.

French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte went so far as to say "we are back to normal." He was speaking in Washington, D.C., on Monday during a forum sponsored by the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

Villepin and Levitte's tone was in stark contrast to the dour assessment of Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who said Saturday that the French social model was "collapsing" - a sign that the unity that rivals Villepin and Sarkozy displayed during the crisis was starting to unravel.

The rioting erupted Oct. 27 and peaked early this month, with vandals torching more than 1,400 cars in one night. The government responded by declaring an ongoing state of emergency that remains in place that allows authorities to impose curfews and more easily search homes.

Meanwhile, several mosques have been attacked or vandalized in what Muslim leaders fear is an anti-immigrant backlash from the rioting.

On Sunday, authorities discovered racist and extremist slogans - including one that said "Defend yourself, France" - spray-painted on a mosque being built in Saint-Etienne in the southeast.

In a separate incident Sunday, attackers armed with two Molotov cocktails damaged a mosque in a low-income area in the eastern town of Fougeres.

In his speech, Levitte said mostly teenagers had acted in the riots out of social and economic hardship. "It was not about the role of Islam in France," he said.

"We never saw any link, direct or indirect," the French diplomat said. "Religion played no role."

"We know that jihadists are recruiting teenagers, but this has nothing to do with the general unrest in those neighborhoods," he said. The teenagers want to be considered 100 percent French, he said. "They want full equality."

Police are investigating the mosque attacks and the death of the high school guard. Police spokesman Alain Rahmouni said there were no arrests so far in the man's death.

As part of renewed government efforts to combat the inequalities laid bare by France's worst riots in four decades, President Jacques Chirac is to meet today with business and labor leaders and TV executives to discuss hiring young people from poor neighborhoods and airing more programs that reflect France's racial diversity.

[Last modified November 22, 2005, 02:15:27]