Huge crowds join French strikes

[wahyinghung]

Huge crowds have taken to the streets in France to protest over the handling of the economic crisis, causing disruption to rail and air services.
Unions said 2.5m workers had rallied to demand action to protect wages and jobs. Police put the total at 1m.
President Nicolas Sarkozy said concerns over the crisis were legitimate and the government had to listen and act.
He will meet union and business leaders next month to discuss what programme of reforms to follow this year, he said.
Overall, the government estimated that a quarter of the country's public sector workers had joined the action, which was called by eight major French unions. The unions put the figure higher.
A spokesman for the CGT union told AFP that 2.5m people across the country had taken part in the day's protests. French police put the number at just over 1m. CGT leader Bernard Thibault called on Mr Sarkozy to recognise the gravity of the situation and "reassess his measures" to deal with the economic crisis.
In Paris, police said some 65,000 demonstrators had joined a march from the Place de la Bastille towards the centre of the city.
There were reports of violent outbreaks on the outskirts of the protest as it reached central Paris, with dozens of youths throwing bottles and lighting fires in a main shopping street.
Police in riot gear charged the youths, pushing them back on to the Place de l'Opera where the crowds were gathering, but the situation remained volatile.
There were repeated baton charges, and after fires were lit on some of Paris' best-known boulevards, police used tear gas on the minority of protesters who were violent.
Earlier, some 25,000 to 30,000 people rallied in the city of Lyon, according to organisers and police.
In Marseille, organisers and the authorities disagreed, with the former putting the number of demonstrators at 300,000 but the police estimating 24,000 had taken part.The protests are against the worsening economic climate in France and at what people believe to be the government's poor handling of the crisis.
Opposition Socialist Party leader Martine Aubry said people were out in the streets "to express what worries them: the fact that they work and yet cannot make ends meet, retired people who just can't make it [financially], the fear of redundancies, and a president of the Republic and a government that just don't want to change policy".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7857435.stm