FRANCE:In a combative interview broadcast live last night on France's leading television and radio stations, president Nicolas Sarkozy promised "the Republic will not cede an inch of ground" to rioters who wounded 82 police officers in two nights of violence this week.
Mr Sarkozy was in China when the rioting started in the suburb of Villiers-le-Bel, north of Paris.
"I view these events with extreme gravity," he said. "I don't take them at all lightly. That individuals shoot at the forces of order, on civil servants who are doing their job, I cannot accept it."
The French leader went directly from the airport to visit policemen in hospital. He repeatedly called the rioters voyous - louts or hooligans. "A brave young policeman lost an eye because a voyou shot at his head. The bullet went under the visor of his helmet," he recounted dramatically.
"I met an extraordinary police commissioner, with his pregnant wife at his side, who was lynched with an iron bar. I tell you solemnly: we will find the shooters."
Asked whether he was concerned at the hatred of the police in the immigrant suburbs, Mr Sarkozy replied: "This isn't hatred of the police. It's individuals who are voyous and who stop at nothing. We shall find them, one by one, and for them it will be the assise court, because shooting at a civil servant is a crime, attempted murder, and I will not accept it."
Police scientists will be able to identify those who shot at police, he promised, adding that security forces would carry out weapons searches.
Mr Sarkozy met a policeman with 18 pieces of buckshot in his body, one lodged in his cheek. "He told me he had the shooter in his sights and he could have fired. We almost had a tragedy."
Mr Sarkozy reacted angrily to suggestions that the riots were caused by "social malaise" or living conditions in the banlieues. It had nothing to do with the motorcycle accident in which two teenagers were killed.
"I don't see how shooting at a policeman, lynching a police commissioner, helps the situation," he said.
"I will not respond to this by giving more money, more means. (I will respond by) giving more punishment to those who did this."
Unlike previous aid plans, his "Marshall plan" for the suburbs, to be announced in January, "will not be based on renovating buildings", Mr Sarkozy said.
"We've already done a lot. The French have the right to ask where their money went. We'll invest a maximum in people. I want us to be generous with those who want to succeed, to find a job and live from their work, and more severe with the tiny minority who behave this way."
Unemployment is close to 40 per cent in the area where the rioting occurred, and per capita income is €6,200 per year, the interviewer observed.
"Not all jobless people shoot at police," Mr Sarkozy said. "Not everyone who has difficulty paying bills burns down the library and schools where their children study. We must stop this nonsense.
"The reality is that there is trafficking and traffickers . . . When you try to explain the inexplicable, it means you're ready to excuse the inexcusable."
Mr Sarkozy also spoke at length about his plans to increase French purchasing power.
Opinion polls show that rising prices and stagnant salaries are now the public's number one concern, ahead of unemployment.
The French president said businesses that conclude agreements with their employees would be exonerated from the 35-hour working week, and pay lower social charges.
"We must allow people to work more and pay them better," he said.