Response To The 2005 Civil Unrest in France - International

International

• Australia - The Prime Minister, Mr John Howard linked the riots in Paris with the French industrial relations (IR) system to justify his new IR legislation. "I do point out that one of the reasons for a feeling of alienation and disadvantage is the persistence of high levels of unemployment in this country against a background of other European economies with less regulated labour markets", he said.
• Germany - "We also have youth violence problems in Germany, but we haven't experienced cases of the dimensions of the blind violence that's taking place in France at the moment", said Norbert Seitz, director of the German Forum for Crime Prevention, a private information center. Wolfgang Schäuble, a conservative member of the Bundestagslated to be Germany's interior minister, concurred. "The conditions in France are different from the ones we have", he said. "We don't have these gigantic high-rise projects that they have on the edges of French cities." Mr. Schäuble added, however, that Germany needed to "improve integration, especially of young people", if violence is to be avoided.
• Iran - The Iranian minister of foreign affairs demanded that France treat its minorities with respect and protect their human rights.
• Italy - Opposition leader Romano Prodi called on the Italian government to take urgent action, telling reporters: "We have the worst suburbs in Europe. I don't think things are so different from Paris. It's only a matter of time."
• Libya - The leader of Libya, Muammar al-Gaddafi spoke with French President Jacques Chirac by telephone and offered to help with the situation.
• Russia - Leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia Vladimir Zhirinovsky claims the riots were sparked by the American CIA to "weaken Europe".
• Senegal - The Senegalese president, Abdoulaye Wade, at the time on a visit to Paris, reacted to the events by declaring that France must "dissolve the ghettos, and integrate all Africans asking to be integrated."
• Sweden - Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson criticised France's response to the violence, saying emergency powers would not help to resolve the problems.
• Turkey - The Turkish prime minister named the French prohibition of headscarves in schools to be one of the reasons for the upsurge of violence in the banlieues. He stated this in an interview with the Turkish newspaper Milliyet. Turkey has similar laws. When the French Prime Minister de Villepin was queried about Erdoğan's statement, he replied "C'est sans rapport", meaning "It is not related."
• United States - State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, asked to comment directly on the riots, said it was a French internal issue, and added, "certainly, as anybody would, we mourn the loss of life in these kinds of situations. But, again, these are issues for the French people and the French government to address."