Skirmishes flare in France after Sarkozy win

PARIS, May 6 (Reuters) Youths clashed with police in Paris and Lyon yesterday and security forces fired tear gas at 2,000 protesters in the French capital after conservative leader Nicolas Sarkozy was elected president.

Reuters reporters saw masked youths throwing bottles, stones and other objects at police who responded with repeated rounds of tear gas and at least one burst of water cannon in Paris's Bastille Square, which is associated with leftist protests.

Four policemen and another person were injured, police said.

Demonstrators chanted ''police everywhere, justice nowhere'' and one scooter was set on fire.

In France's second largest city, Lyon, protesters scuffled in the main square with police who used tear gas.

There were reports of sporadic violence in suburbs outside the capital, but police called them isolated incidents.

The troublespots included Argenteuil, a flashpoint of riots in 2005 which Sarkozy's critics blamed on his hardline stance as interior minister and a ''scum'' jibe he directed at youngsters.

At Argenteuil, northwest of the capital, four vehicles including a parked bus were set on fire, police said.

''There are some tensions but they are isolated incidents,'' a police spokesman said.

Reuters reporters saw two cars burning near the tough suburb of Clichy northeast of Paris. In Toulouse in southwest France and Rennes in the west, youths burned rubbish bins.

The defeated Socialists portrayed Sarkozy as a danger for France during the election campaign, saying he was authoritarian and likely to exacerbate tensions in the poor, multi-racial suburbs that ring many cities.

Thousands of extra police have been drafted in to patrol sensitive areas yesterday and a Reuters correspondent in the southeastern city of Lyon reported clashes between police and leftist sympathisers earlier in the evening.

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