Militant French jobless groups call for protests to continue

Organizations representing unemployed people in France called on militant jobless occupying unemployment benefit offices to continue their action, France 2 teletext reported.

The call, which also had the support of the CGT trade union, came after Prime Minister Lionel Jospin announced the setting up of an emergency fund for the unemployed and reiterated that the government had to ensure that the Assedic welfare offices, many of which have been occupied since the middle of December, could again operate normally.

In a statement, the organizations called on their supporters to "maintain the mobilization" and "continue to occupy the Assedic offices and other sites" , the teletext said .

As Jospin was announcing his measures to tackle the unemployment crisis earlier in the day, 19 Assedic offices nationwide were still occupied, the report added.

Jean-Marie Honoret, of the group Action Against Unemployment (AC!), told La Chaine Info TV that the current occupation of welfare offices by militant jobless would continue.

"We've decided to go on to the end.

We started this action on 15th December.

Everyone is determined to see this out.

Our morale is still good.

We can't take any more.

The alarm bells have started ringing.

We want something concrete," he said.

BBC Monitoring (http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk), based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.