Paris, November 5
Violence broke out in poor suburbs of north-eastern Paris for the ninth consecutive night as French youths set fire to cars and buildings despite a heavy police presence in riot-hit areas. Firemen rushed to put out fires in the suburb of Val d'Oise after youths torched some 10 cars and two buildings, one of them a bakery, yesterday.

In another suburb, Epinay-sous-Bois, about 40 youths, wearing hoods to hide their faces, ransacked around 10 cars, the police told a Reuters photographer.

Rioting by youths, many of whom are Muslims of North African and black African origin, has partly been stoked by their frustration at high unemployment and the perception they lack economic opportunities.

The latest outbreak of violence came in defiance of a high-profile police presence.

About 1,300 officers were deployed in Seine-Saint-Denis, the area worst hit in more than a week of disturbances and where the violence first began last week after two teenagers of African origin died while fleeing the police.

More officers were deployed in other suburbs where unrest had broken out, national police said, adding that the units were more mobile than previously.

The violence, which first began in Seine-Saint-Denis, has escalated this week and spread overnight between Thursday and yesterday to a few other towns in France -- Rouen in northern France, Dijon in the east and Marseille in the south.

This has put mounting pressure on Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin's government to restore order without alienating minority and underprivileged groups. — Reuters

Paris, November 5
France may veto a global trade deal if no agreement can be reached on farm tariffs, the country’s trade minister said in an interview published today.

“The threat of a veto is real if we are beyond what is acceptable,” Mr Christine Lagarde told French daily Liberation.

“But I hope that we will not have to use that weapon.”

President Jacques Chirac warned European Union leaders last month he was ready to torpedo a World Trade Organisation (WTO) deal if it called into question the bloc’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), of which France is the biggest beneficiary.

Trade ministers from the EU, the United States, Brazil, India and Japan are due to meet at the Indian embassy in London on Monday to discuss progress on a trade deal.

A wider meeting will be hosted by WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy in Geneva the following day.

Mr Largarde told Liberation that agriculture was a strategic sector for France.

“France has a strategic vision of agriculture. This is a not a commercial sector like any other,” she added.

The French Government, backed by the country’s powerful farm lobby, wants to see progress in other areas such as industrial goods and services rather than keeping the focus on agriculture.

EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, who negotiates on behalf of the bloc within a mandate from the EU’s 25 members, has proposed to reduce average tariffs on agricultural imports to just over 12 per cent.

The offer represents an average cut in the EU’s farm import tariffs of 38 percent, an EU official said — less than the 54 per cent average cut demanded by the United States and other countries. — Reuters

London, November 5
The police response to protests by Sikhs over a controversial play they claimed debased their religion was “totally justified”, senior English judges said.

Two High Court judges in London said yesterday that the police faced a difficult task in dealing with hundreds of demonstrators who were angered at the showing of “Behzti” (Dishonour) in Birmingham, central England, in December last year.

The play — which theatre officials eventually pulled after the protests turned violent — sparked fury among Sikhs opposed to its scenes of murder and rape in a fictional gurdwara.

Its author, Gupreet Kaur Bhatti, was forced into hiding after receiving death threats as the row escalated into a national debate about censorship and freedom of speech.

In a legal challenge, one of the protesters — who was arrested for refusing to move away from the theatre — claimed the use of dispersal orders denied them the right to legitimate protest.

But rejecting the application, Judge Maurice Kay said the police had received reports of violence towards theatre staff, including threats to kill.

In those circumstances, the orders could be used against protesters, he ruled.

The right to demonstrate was safeguarded by the fact that the law had to be applied in a balanced and proportionate way, said the judge.

“I am satisfied that the totality of the material in the possession of the police totally justified the issuing of dispersal directions,” he stated.

The Sikh Community Forum, which backed the application, said they were considering an appeal. — AFP

London, November 5
Tension gripped the central English city of Birmingham after dozens of Muslim gravestones were vandalised at a cemetery there, triggering concerns about fresh racial riots.

The desecration of up to 45 gravestones was discovered yesterday morning by relatives visiting the Muslim part of Handsworth Cemetery in Birmingham. Leaflets from a group calling itself 'Black Nation' were left at the graves.

The incident follows violence between Asian and black youths in the Lozells area of Birmingham last month, provoked by an unsubstantiated claim that a 14-year-old black girl had been raped by a gang of Asians. One man was killed and scores injured.

No evidence has been found to support the rape allegation, which appeared to have started on a pirate radio station, despite intensive police inquiries. Some of the youths said last night that the destruction of the gravestones would lead to trouble.

West Midlands police said extra officers would be on duty in the Lozells area during the weekend in case of any more trouble. Mr Khalid Mahmood, the Labour MP for Perry Barr in Birmingham who visited the cemetery shortly after the incident, said: "These are disgraceful events, deliberately done to provoke people.

"They are definitely trying to cause more problems, particularly on this day (the festival of Eid ul-Fitr) when Muslims are coming to pay their respects."

On the other hand, the police and a black news website, Blink, said they had never heard of 'Black Nation' and that the attack could have been the work of the far Right, trying to provoke violence between African-Caribbean and Asian youths.

When asked if he had heard of 'Black Nation', Superintendent Tom Coughlin, from West Midlands Police, said: "That name means nothing to me at all." He said that officers would be investigating whether it was the work of another group trying to start trouble between the black and Asian community. — PTI

London, November 5
A Danish experiment in testing ''the limits of freedom of speech'' with newspaper cartoons of Prophet Mohammed have provoked an outcry.

Thousands of Muslims have taken to the streets in protest at the caricatures, the newspaper that published them has received death threats and two of its cartoonists have been forced into hiding. Jyllands-Posten, Denmark's leading daily, defied Islam's ban on images of the Prophet by printing cartoons by 12 different artists.

In one, he is depicted as a sabre-wielding terrorist accompanied by women in burqas, in another, his turban appears to be a bomb and in a third, he is portrayed as a schoolboy by a blackboard.

The Ambassadors of 11 Muslim countries called on the Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen to take ''necessary steps'' against the ''defamation of Islam''.

But Mr Rasmussen, head of a Centre-Right minority coalition dependent for its survival on support from an anti-foreigner party, called the cartoons a ''necessary provocation'' and refused to act.

''I will never accept that respect for a religious stance leads to the curtailment of criticism, humour and satire in the Press,'' he said.

The Danish debate over how to integrate Muslims has raged for years, with nursery school menus and women-only opening hours for swimming pools particular battlegrounds. — UNI