Wave of violence is said to subside in France

PARIS -- The wave of firebombings, looting, and fierce street fights between vandals and police appeared to subside yesterday, amid cold, rainy weather and ''state of emergency" measures that the embattled government ordered on Tuesday.

In a statement likely to stir controversy among immigrant groups, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy called for the expulsion of foreigners convicted of taking part in the extraordinary surge of violence that has stunned Europe, and that has put the spotlight on France's integration policies.

Almost all participants in the riots are Muslims of Arab or African origin, authorities have said. Some have adopted the language of militant Islam, but police say the rebellion in hundreds of towns and cities has been fomented mostly by street thugs, gangs, and jobless young men, not by organized radical Muslim groups. Politicians and news media, however, suggest that Islamic activists are quietly egging on the rioters.

The mayhem that some call the ''French intifadah" continued.

But incidents of arson and the destruction of shops and government facilities dropped dramatically, for the first time since the uprising started two weeks ago, authorities said.

From sunset Tuesday to dawn yesterday, firebombers destroyed 617 vehicles in 116 towns. That was down sharply from previous nights, when more than 1,300 vehicles were torched.

The emergency decree, issued under a 50-year-old law created to suppress disorder during France's colonial war in Algeria, allowed police broader powers of arrest and gave authorities the power to impose curfews in some areas and shut down public places where youths gathered.

The emergency applied to Paris; its suburbs; and 30 other cities and towns from the English Channel to Mediterranean Sea.

Paris did not invoke the curfew, however, and the street life and tourist attractions were largely undisturbed, with visitors seeming oblivious to the troubles.

The United States and other countries have issued advisories that urged caution in areas of high danger, but have stopped short of warning against travel to France.

''We watch it on CNN at the hotel, but it doesn't seem real," Michael Goldstein of Scarsdale, N.Y., said yesterday as he snapped photographs of his wife feeding pigeons outside Notre Dame Cathedral. ''Except, coming in from the airport, we could see the smoke and all the police vehicles."

The Mediterranean resort city of Nice, on the French Riviera, imposed a curfew on minors and authorized massive police raids yesterday to disrupt gangs.

A poll published yesterday by Le Parisien newspaper suggested that 73 percent of French approve of the government's crackdown. But other newspapers criticized Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin for invoking a law associated with the country's colonial era.

''The prime minister seems to be losing his cool," the Paris daily Le Monde declared.

In an unusually harsh editorial, the newspapter asserted that the leader ''does not have the nerves that a statesman needs."

Despite the decline in incidents, unrest persisted. Arsonists destroyed an electronics superstore in the northern town of Arras, torched a newspaper warehouse in the Riviera perfume center of Grasse, and detonated an incendiary device on an empty subway train in Lyon, forcing the city to temporarily shut down its transit system, according to wire service reports that quoted police officials. No one was injured.

The violence erupted on Oct. 27 after two youths in Clichy-sous-Bois, a community of bleak public housing tracts and high unemployment north of Paris, were electrocuted while hiding from police in a power substation.

The lawlessness soon spread to hundreds of ''banlieues" -- a word for ''suburbs" that often is used to connote the immigrant settlements that ring many cities.

Authorities said they had arrested more than 1,830 suspects in the past 13 days, although many of youths seized were released for lack of evidence.

Sarkozy, the interior minister, who some say inflamed the crisis by referring to rioters in its early days as ''scum," said yesterday that the government should deport any foreigners involved in the disturbances, even those who are legal residents of France.

''I have asked regional prefects to expel foreigners who [are] convicted -- whether they have proper residency papers or not -- without delay," he said at a session of the National Assembly, the lower house of the national Parliament.