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We cannot allow France to become an apartheid state, he said in an interview to several French media as Barack Obama, the first black American to serve as US president, began his first full day in office.
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FRENCH DIVERSITY CZAR WARNS OF 'APARTHEID'
Received Wednesday, 21 January 2009 13:09:00 GMT
PARIS, Jan 21, 2009 (AFP) - President Nicolas Sarkozy's new diversity czar warned Wednesday that France risked becoming an apartheid state unless it brings minorities into the mainstream.
    "Today we are creating a rift that is leading straight to apartheid," said Yazid Sabeg, an Algerian-born businessman who last month was named France's new commissioner for diversity and equal opportunities.
    "We cannot allow France to become an apartheid state," he said in an interview to several French media as Barack Obama, the first black American to serve as US president, began his first full day in office.
    Obama took the oath of office in Washington on Tuesday, 15 years after white-minority rule ended in South Africa with the election of Nelson Mandela.
    Sabeg noted that poverty in France affected mostly black and Arab minorities and warned that "this period ahead of us is our last chance" to address problems from integration.
    "There have been several warnings," he said, singling out the three weeks of rioting in the high-immigrant suburbs in 2005, France's worst civil unrest in decades.
    "We are creating a societal civil war in this country that could tomorrow become a war between communities," he added.
    Obama's rise to the White House has stirred debate in France about the plight of minorities who remain for the most part locked out of the political and business elites.
    France's political establishment remains overwhelmingly white despite the appointment of two women of north African descent and a black human rights minister in Sarkozy's right-wing government.
    There is only one black member of parliament from mainland France.
    Sarkozy last month appointed Sabeg to draft an action plan to promote diversity at elite schools, in business and in the media.


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  Politics and Society    FAMU01 Thu, 22 Jan 2009 04:24:33 GMT     © AFP


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FAMU01 Thu, 22 Jan 2009 04:24:33 GMT