Sarkozy Unveils Plan for Deprived Housing Estates

Nicolas Sarkozy's government today unveiled its first moves to tackle problems on France's rundown, high rise estates which remain plagued by poverty, unemployment and race discrimination two years after major riots in 2005.

But bickering between ministers, and the president's desire to wrestle control of the plans himself, meant today's promises of jobs and investment were thin on detail. Sarkozy has promised a full explanation of his strategy for the riot-hit suburbs at a media event at a tower block next month.

The president is a hate figure to many of the 5m people who live on France's decaying suburban estates after he likened wayward youths to scum and endorsed riot police squads when he was interior minister.

He was unable to carry out walk abouts during his election campaign last year due to fears for his own safety. But before his election, Sarkozy promised an ambitious "Marshal Plan" for the banlieues, or outer suburbs, that would end the fetid living conditions, discrimination and poverty in neighborhoods where the rate of unemployment for under-25s hovers around 35%.

Sarkozy handed responsibility for the plan to Fadela Amara, an outspoken, leftwing feminist campaigner who grew up on a rough estate with her illiterate Algerian parents and still insists on living in a council flat.

Today at Vaulx-en-Velin, the site of France's first suburban riots in 1979, Amara promised to create 45,000 new jobs in areas where up to half young men who are black or of north African origin are out of work.

She aims to cut youth unemployment by 40% in three years, providing tutors for struggling children and work placements for school-leavers.

The government will invest €1bn (£745m) on education, employment schemes and transport focusing on 100 flash point areas, out of more than 300 that erupted in violence in 2005. Amara said she wanted to create a banlieue elite and restore hope to French citizens in these ghettoes who were treated as outcasts because of their color, immigrant origins or address. She described "discrimination, exclusion, misery, a France that is very poor" and tense.

The urgent need for action was driven home by riots last November in Villiers-le-Bel north of Paris, where rioters shot at police, showing the potential for serious violence.

Last night, Sarkozy staged a surprise visit to a fragile estate west of Paris, his first such trip since his election. He told youths: "We won't let anyone down, on one condition: that those who have been given advice and training make the effort to get up in the morning."

This month, the government announced it would restore a form of community policing - a practice Sarkozy had scrapped as interior minister, favoring the sporadic use of riot police and officers bussed in from outside.

The president also vowed to compensate people on low income whose cars are torched on estates. At least 46,800 cars were burnt in France in 2007, compared with 44,000 the year before.

Sarkozy, stung by his recent poor poll ratings, is hoping that his own highly-anticipated detailed banlieue plan next month will boost his standing.

But on the ground, some remained skeptical. "If this is just another thin sprinkling [of measures] it won't work," warned the socialist mayor of Villiers-le-Bel.