Riots roil suburbs of Paris for 7th day

PARIS -- President Jacques Chirac met with his Cabinet yesterday to map strategy to end rioting that spread to 13 predominantly immigrant towns on the outskirts of Paris. After darkness fell yesterday, youths turned out in several areas for a seventh night of mayhem, setting cars on fire and throwing rocks at police.

''Zones without law cannot exist in the republic," Chirac told his Cabinet in a closed meeting, according to his spokesman, Jean-François Cope.

The president declared that law would be enforced firmly, but he also acknowledged frustrations in immigrant neighborhoods and urged dialogue, Cope said.

Chirac has not addressed the French public about the unrest that erupted last Thursday night when two Muslim teenagers of African heritage were electrocuted in a power substation while dodging a police checkpoint in the impoverished town of Chichy-sous-Bois, northeast of Paris.

A rapid escalation of the violence Tuesday night appeared to shock the French leadership. Gangs set fire to as many as 228 vehicles in 13 poor, immigrant communities, according to local police and news media. Last night, the violence continued, with youths setting fire to vehicles and trash cans in nine areas near Paris.

On Tuesday, youths attacked a fire station in the northern suburban town of Aulnay-sous-Bois and a vacant social center in the southeastern community of Seine-en-Marne and set fire to cars in towns in the Yvelines region, west of the capital, police said. Riot police, bunched together behind shields, fired rubber-coated bullets, stun grenades, and tear gas canisters in efforts to disperse the attackers.

Television footage showed one group of riot policemen pointing their guns through the window of an apartment building's door, as women and children cowered.

The violence was contagious in communities of immigrants and second-generation French citizens where unemployment is more than twice the national average, crime is rampant, social services are minimal, and residents are packed into the shabby high-rise apartments of subsidized housing.

''This problem is exploding in the face of the government," said Dominique Moïsi, deputy director of the French Institute of International Relations. ''They have politicized it so much they are making fools of themselves. There's the image of Paris burning and that is very, very bad."

Because of the violence, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin postponed a visit to Canada yesterday, and Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy canceled a four-day trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Chirac's Cabinet met through the day yesterday, but announced no plans for countering the violence. Villepin and Sarkozy have accused each other of inaction.

''The spectacle of the open rift over this issue between the prime minister and his allies on the one hand and the interior minister and his supporters on the other is pathetic," the newspaper Liberation said yesterday. It said the unrest has become a pretext for ''a new test of strength" between the presidential contenders.