PARIS, Nov. 8 (Xinhuanet) -- The French government, after giving the green light to curfews, announced Tuesday a spate of social and economic measures aimed to bring an end to the ongoing violence and restore public order.

France's Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy speaks to journalists outside Elysee Palace after the weekly cabinet meeting in Paris November 8, 2005. (Xinhua/AFP photo)

    "Our collective responsibility is to make difficult areas the same sort of territory as others in the republic," Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said in the announcement, adding "the re-establishment of public order is a prerequisite" to the measures being implemented.

    The initiatives aiming at encouraging employment and education, as well as reducing social imbalance, include:

    - the creation of an anti-discrimination agency with special officials appointed to be in charge of certain regions, and makingthe fight against discrimination a national priority;

    - 20,000 job contracts with local government bodies or associations paid a minimum wage would be reserved for those in the suburbs struggling to find work;

    - an extra 100 million euros (120 million dollars) for associations that work in the neighborhoods;

    - 5,000 more teaching assistant posts in the 1,200 schools in districts designated as trouble spots;

    - the creation of 15 more special economic zones that provide tax breaks to companies that set up inside them as an incentive to boost local employment.

    The French government also declared a state of emergency in riot-hit areas and French President Jacques Chirac decided to "give the forces of law and order supplementary means in order to assure the protection of our fellow citizens and their property ...It is necessary to hasten a return to calm", according to his spokesman.

    Tuesday's cabinet meeting has given powers to local government to impose curfew if necessary as the toughest response to nearly two weeks of unrest in some 300 French cities, where more than 6,000 cars were torched and more than 1,500 arrests were made.

    The 1955 emergency powers law invoked by the French government gives power to local government officials, or prefects, to "forbidthe movement of people and vehicles in places and times fixed by decree" and ban "meetings likely to provoke or fuel disorder".

    It also allows the authorities to "order house searches at any time of day or night" and to control "press and publications of all kinds" and permits the interior minister to issue house arrests for people "whose activity is dangerous for public safety."

    Amiens in northern France became the first to declare an overnight curfew from 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. Tuesday (2100 GMT to0500 GMT) for unaccompanied under 16-year-olds and a ban on the sale of petrol to minors. The measure was to go into effect at midnight (2300 GMT) in other riot-hit areas where the prefects judge necessary.

    The resorting to the law aroused many criticism. French left-wing newspaper Le Monde said that it would give "the youth of the suburbs a message of astonishing brutality: that after 50 years France intends to treat them exactly as it did their grandparents",since the law was firstly enacted in then French-controled Algeria.

    The violence, worst since the 1968 May student revolution, was sparked on Oct. 27 after the accidental electrocution of two teenagers who tried to flee a police identity check in Clichy-sous-bois, northeast Paris suburb. Enditem