CRUNCH TIME

Hugh Schofield provides a succinct appraisal of the situation in France:

Once the two-week mark approaches, the events will start resembling the large-scale suburban uprising that doom-mongers have predicted for years.

Words like "intifada" will start being bandied around, and the stakes will suddenly be much higher.

There are two solid reasons for pessimism. The first is the way the rioters have seized on Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy as their elemental hate-figure.

To hear the words of the protesters, and indeed much of the reporting of the violence, one can sometimes get the impression that Mr Sarkozy actually created the unrest.

In fact his rhetoric, while undoubtedly uncompromising and hardline, has been wilfully misinterpreted, and not just by the rioters.

To describe the bands of youths rampaging through the suburbs as "yobs" or "rabble" - which he did - is not quite the same as describing all inhabitants of the suburbs as "scum", which is how it has sometimes come across in the media.

The other reason for pessimism is that the rioters can read in much of the reaction to their rampages a legitimisation of what they have done.

The universal press response - both national and international, left and right - has been to point out how the French model of integration has failed, and how the suburbs have become exploding cauldrons.

From every direction come calls for a new assessment, but some calls are stronger than others.

An editorialist in Le Monde, for example compared the riots to May 1968, and expressed the hope that just as the student uprising forced a major - and in the writer's view - positive change to French society, so will these. That is not exactly an encouragement for the violence to cease.

Any changes to French society forced by these street thugs will rightly be seen as a sign of weakness. The government must give Sarkozy 100% support and let him do what needs to be done.