French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin has announced a one billion franc ($164m) emergency job-boosting fund to try to end a three-week-old campaign of protests by unemployed people.

Faced with his first serious crisis in seven months of power, Jospin also said he would look into longer-term measures to ease the plight of France's 3.1 million jobless.

But he made it clear that aid must not be allowed to burden the country's already stretched budget and derail economic growth.

French PM Jospin urges unemployed to be patient

"A policy of job-creating growth is essential to curb unemployment. Breaking that process would rapidly entail effects contrary to those sought," he told a packed news conference.

The Socialist Prime Minister reiterated his determination to create jobs and said his controversial plans to cut the working week to 35 hours from 39 by 2000 would be essential to curb the jobless rate now running at 12.4% of the workforce.

"We know this is going to take time, but we know many cannot wait," he said.

He urged the jobless protesters to end their occupation of unemployment offices and let the offices carry out their social services.

Welfare office occupation

"The government is assuming its responsibilities. Everyone must assume his own," he said.

Among other measures for the jobless, Jospin said he would review social benefits and turn emergency local units set up to tackle the protesters' demands into permanent bodies.

He asked trade unions and jobless associations to make proposals that could become part of a bill to be introduced next March to help the destitute.

Marie-Therese Join-Lambert, the general inspector for social affairs, was appointed to coordinate the plans.

Jospin said the protests testified to deep distress among the jobless, some of whom could not pay for rent, electricity bills or children's school meals, and had been exacerbated by the atmosphere of free spending through the Christmas period.

Under pressure to deliver on an election pledge made last year to tackle unemployment, Jospin had held talks on Thursday with representatives of the jobless, trade unions and employers.

But the government, committed to reduce the budget deficit to 3% of gross domestic product this year to prepare for European monetary union has little spare cash to throw at the problem.

The demand for fresh funds to help the unemployed comes as private economists are warning that France may not enjoy the 3% growth the government expects this year because of the reduction in exports caused by a spate of economic crisesin Asia.

Slower-than-expected growth could strain the government's budget plans and make all the harder efforts to reduce unemployment.

Employers representatives nervous about possible tax rise

Jospin also faces criticism from employers over the government's plans to cut the working week, leaving him uncomfortably squeezed between protesting unemployed on the left and angry corporate bosses on the right.

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