France's Sarkozy under fire over violent crime

PARIS, Sep 21 (Reuters) Judges and political rivals today branded French presidential frontrunner Nicolas Sarkozy a failure as interior minister after a brutal attack on a police officer triggered a fresh outcry over rising crime.

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin summoned Sarkozy and other senior ministers after a score of top government officials warned of a rise in violence in tinderbox suburbs.

A police officer suffered serious head and eye injuries late on Tuesday in an attack by youths in a tough neighbourhood south of Paris. The assault highlighted the jump in violence against police and the public seen in recent crime figures.

Sarkozy, his plan to contest next year's presidential elections built in part on his law-and-order credentials, said judges were failing to jail the rising number of criminals arrested by police.

''Such decisions are a form of abdication of responsibility over delinquents who are more and more violent every day,'' he said, commenting on a report, leaked on Tuesday, that criticised soft sentencing by judges.

Michel Gaudin, head of the national police service, told RTL radio that 2,799 people had been arrested this year for violence in the Seine-Saint-Denis area north of Paris but ''in 70 per cent of cases there was no response'' from the courts.

In an unprecedented move, the head of France's top court, Guy Canivet, sought a meeting with President Jacques Chirac, constitutional guarantor of the judiciary's independence.

The first president of the Cour de Cassation said he would raise the ''seriousness of the repeated attacks on the separation of powers provided for by the constitution and the unease felt by judges in a situation that compromises the workings of the justice system''.

Chirac wrote to top judges in June last year pledging to ensure respect of their independence after Sarkozy called for the punishment of a judge who paroled a murderer later arrested over the killing of a lone jogger.

TINDERBOX Sarkozy was then pushing for tougher sentences for repeat offenders. Furious judges yesterday said he was making them the scapegoat of his failed policies.

''It is unacceptable for the interior minister to use the justice system to hide his own failures in fighting crime,'' said Dominique Barella of a judges' union, a frequent Sarkozy critic.

Laurent Fabius, a former Socialist prime minister with his own presidential ambitions, said the latest furore showed the bankruptcy of Sarkozy's policies.

''There is a clear failure of the government's and Mr Sarkozy's policies,'' Fabius said on France Inter radio. Community police scrapped by Sarkozy in 2002 should be restored, Fabius added.

Tensions remain high in France's poor neighbourhoods 10 months after suburban riots last winter forced the government to invoke rarely used emergency powers.

''One spark and things could explode again,'' said Pierre Cardo, a conservative mayor of a tough district near Paris.

Though polls show strong support for Sarkozy, aides say a police blunder during any repeat rioting could sink his presidential hopes.

REUTERS PB MIR RAI2152