Marchers sense victory

PARIS — French students and labor unions staged another day of nationwide strikes and marches against a labor-reform law Tuesday amid signs they would win major concessions from an increasingly divided government.

A nationwide strike closed the Eiffel Tower and snarled air and rail travel for the second time in a week while students barricaded themselves in schools.

There was a mood of impending triumph among marchers because of efforts by President Jacques Chirac to end a two-month crisis that has shut down schools and universities and raised fears of a return of last year's urban unrest.

"We are perhaps on the verge of a great victory," said Olivier Besancenot, a Communist Revolutionary party leader.

More than a million protesters demonstrated across the nation, matching the turnout of a similar "day of action" last week, authorities said.

The protests were generally peaceful, though police faced off with rock-throwing youths in the evening as marches ended in Paris and the western city of Rennes. Strikes disrupted service at airports, train stations and other public facilities.

Although Chirac signed the much-disputed law Friday, he simultaneously relented to critics by holding up its implementation and proposing new legislation to soften its impact.

Chirac's move undercut his protégé, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who had staked his reputation and ambitions for the presidency on the initiative to reduce youth unemployment by making it easier for businesses to hire and fire workers under 26.

It also allowed the prime minister's arch-rival, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, leader of the center-right governing coalition, to take a lead role in brokering peace on the streets.

Leaders of the center-left parliamentary opposition berated Villepin during a debate in the National Assembly on Tuesday, declaring that he had reduced him to a figurehead.

Chirac's decision is likely to gut the reform that Villepin had hurried through the Assembly. The president's proposed amendments would reduce a probationary period for young workers from two years to one and require employers to justify firings in writing.

Villepin could be wounded irrevocably by the demise of his project and join the list of prime ministers who have paid the price for clashing with the powerful labor unions here.

Some of the Paris marchers on Tuesday carried signs describing the prime minister as a political cadaver. Chirac, Sarkozy and capitalism also were targets of derisive chants by a festive mix of high-school and college students, union members and activists from an assortment of far-left parties.

Police turned out in force to prevent violence and crime that have marred previous protests.

As dusk fell Tuesday, however, skirmishes broke out in the Place d'Italie, the final destination of the march, where youths threw objects at police, photographers and camera operators before dispersing. Police made 383 arrests in Paris and at least 137 in the provinces. Thirty-five people, including four officers, were injured, officials said.