World

BANGUI, Central African Republic — Seventeen people were killed in a flashpoint Muslim enclave of Bangui, capital of the Central African Republic (CAR), where a UN soldier also reportedly died, an AFP reporter saw on Wednesday.

Residents of the PK5 district laid out the bodies of 17 men in front of the headquarters of the United Nations mission (MINUSCA) in Bangui, saying they had been killed in clashes on Tuesday between local armed groups and UN peacekeepers. 

“Yesterday they killed lots of people. Here are the dead, which we have brought here,” one man told AFP, as the bodies, draped in white, were laid before the closed door of the mission.

Several UN armoured vehicles were stationed around the MINUSCA base.

A security source late Tuesday said a UN soldier was killed and eight others wounded in the violence, which came when their patrol was ambushed on the outskirts of the neighbourhood.

“A Rwandan patrol supported by Central African forces was shot at and then pursued the attackers into PK5,” the source had told AFP. 

The violence marks a fresh escalation between MINUSCA and militia groups that control most of the CAR’s territory.

The CAR spiralled into bloodshed after longtime leader Francois Bozize was overthrown in 2013 by the mainly Muslim Seleka rebel alliance.

France intervened militarily to push out the Seleka alliance, but the country — one of the poorest in the world — remains plagued by violence between ex-rebels and vigilante militias.

Many armed groups are nominally organised along religious lines, but often fight for control of revenue from extortion, roadblocks or mineral resources.

The PK5 was once a Muslim rebel bastion, but is now home to several criminal groups that have taken advantage of the weakness of the state.

The UN recently threatened to dismantle all the armed groups’ bases in the area unless they hand over their weapons, according to sources.

A series of clashes began on April 1, when UN peacekeepers on patrol in PK5 came under attack and returned fire. A security sweep began in the area on Sunday, which was followed by Tuesday’s bloodshed.

FRANKFURT AM MAIN — Tens of thousands of air passengers were stranded on Tuesday as workers at airlines Lufthansa and Air France staged strikes that crippled traffic at several major European airports.

Germany's biggest carrier Lufthansa was forced to cancel 800 out of 1,600 scheduled flights, including 58 long-haul flights.

German public sector workers including ground crew and airport firefighters walked out at 5:00 am with the strike due to last until 6:00 pm (16:00 GMT).

Tuesday's "warning strike" hit Germany's biggest airport Frankfurt as well as other regional hubs such as Munich, Cologne and Bremen.

Other airports such as Hamburg, Leipzig and Hanover were hit with knock-on effects.

Half of the flights at Munich were delayed or cancelled according to the union Verdi, national news agency DPA reported.

Beyond airports, local transport, kindergartens, rubbish collection and hospitals were also affected, as civil servants walked out to demand a 6-per cent pay raise for the 2.3 million people working for Germany's federal, state and local governments.

Given the country's economic strength, "when if not now should there be significant pay increases for workers, including those in the public sector?" asked Verdi leader Frank Bsirske in an appearance at Frankfurt airport.

"We're determined to achieve this."

But the ADV airport operators' association accused unions of "lacking all proportionality", with the strike disrupting tens of thousands of journeys — 90,000 at Lufthansa alone — and costs they said would run into the millions.

Airport operator Fraport said on Tuesday afternoon that service should return to normal in the early evening.

"It will take about 45 to 60 minutes for all the positions to be manned again and then we'll go back to normal service," a spokesman told DPA.

Beer at 8:00 am 

Travellers had plenty of notice of upsets to their plans, avoiding scenes of chaos at Frankfurt airport, but some could not avoid travelling on Tuesday.

Sybille Metzler, who was due to travel to Amsterdam for a meeting, turned up at the hub despite warnings from the operator that her flight had been cancelled.

"I knew, but I wanted to see if I can still get there, because it won't work with the train," the 41-year-old management accountant told AFP.

Some passengers who faced disruption were understanding of the walkout.

"It's fair enough. Hope they get it," said Ashley Gillham, 40, a manager in the auto sector, of the strikers' pay demands — despite having to switch to rail for part of his journey from New Zealand via Frankfurt to Mallorca.

"This way we get to have a beer at 8:00 am," he joked.

Sixth walkout
at Air France

In unrelated industrial action in France, air traffic was also severely disrupted as the country's biggest airline Air France was forced to cancel one in four flights, in the sixth round of strikes launched by its employees since February.

Around 65 per cent of long-haul flights will depart as planned, the carrier said, with higher proportions on schedule among medium- and short-haul services from Paris and other French airports.

The group said the strikes between February 22 and April 11 were estimated to cost the company 170 million euros ($210 million).

Several Air France unions have called four further days of industrial action in April as they also seek a 6-per cent pay raise.

Managers say the company is not growing solidly enough to justify such salary boosts, which they reckon would cost 240 million euros per year.

Air France's labour woes come at the same time as disruption for French state rail operator SNCF. 

Workers are staging repeated walkouts in protest at the French government's plan to reform the company and change the special status its employees enjoy.

DHAKA — Thousands of students across Bangladesh staged protests and sit-ins om Monday after clashes at the country’s top university left at least 100 people injured.

Police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at Dhaka University students fighting what they complain are discriminatory quotas for government jobs in favour of special groups.

It was one of the biggest protests faced by prime minister Sheikh Hasina in her decade in power.

Following the violence that erupted on Sunday and continued into the early hours of Monday, classes at Dhaka University ground to a halt as thousands occupied the main square chanting “Reform, reform!”

Students at state-run universities in Chittagong, Khulna, Rajshahi, Barisal, Rangpur, Sylhet and Savar also boycotted classes and staged sit-ins, police and media said. 

At Jahangirnagar University alone, more than 1,000 students joined the demonstrations, said Ataur Rahman, a protester in Savar where the university is located.

Dhaka University students said they would continue their fight. 

“We won’t leave the streets unless our demands are met. This is all about dignity. We are not afraid of bullets,” said Abdullah Bhuiyan, a 22-year-old English student.

Another student, Saimon Rahman, said quotas meant young graduates missed out on government jobs: “We want a merit-based society. We want equal opportunities for all,” he said.

Students burned furniture and set lengths of bamboo alight but no fresh clashes were reported after the overnight scuffles turned Dhaka University into a battleground.

Hundreds of police patrolled key entry points to the campus. 

Organisers in Dhaka said they had been holding peaceful protests on Sunday when police started firing tear gas and rubber bullets, and used batons and water cannon to clear a central square.

As violence spread across the campus, thousands of male and female students engaged in pitched battles with officers.

“More than 100 people were injured,” police inspector Bacchu Mia told AFP, adding they were treated in hospital but their condition was not serious.

Protesters threw rocks, vandalised the home of the Dhaka University vice chancellor, torched two cars and ransacked the fine arts institute, said senior police officer Azimul Haque.

Fifteen people were detained, police said.

The students are angry at the government’s decision to set aside 56 per cent of civil service jobs for the families of veterans from the 1971 war of independence and for disadvantaged minorities. 

That leaves most university graduates to fight for only 44 per cent of the jobs.

The Cabinet, led by Hasina, discussed the quota issue at its weekly meeting on Monday, Cabinet secretary Shafiul Alam told AFP. 

The prime minister has asked senior minister Obaidul Quader to hold a meeting with the protest leaders, he said.

Hasan Al Mamun, a leader of the protests, said tens of thousands of students joined the demonstrations nationwide on Monday. Police declined to estimate the number.

Al Mamun said the quota for top-grade jobs should be reduced to only 10 per cent. 

“These quotas are discriminatory. Due to the quota system, 56 per cent of the jobs are set aside for 5 per cent of the country’s population, and 95 per cent of the people can compete for the 44 per cent,” he said.

Students are particularly upset at the 30 per cent quota set aside for descendants of veterans of the independence war.

Sheikh Hasina, whose father was the architect of the country’s independence from Pakistan, has rejected demands to slash the quotas.

SASEBO/TOKYO, Japan — Japan on Saturday activated its first marine unit since World War II trained to counter invaders occupying Japanese islands along the edge of the East China Sea that Tokyo fears are vulnerable to attack by China.

In a ceremony held at a military base near Sasebo on the southwest island of Kyushu, about 1,500 members of the Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade (ARDB) wearing camouflage lined up outside amid cold, windy weather.

"Given the increasingly difficult defence and security situation surrounding Japan, defence of our islands has become a critical mandate," Tomohiro Yamamoto, vice defence minister, said in a speech.

The troops conducted a 20-minute mock public exercise recapturing a remote island from invaders.

The formation of the Japanese marine brigade is controversial because amphibious units can project military force and could, critics warn, be used to threaten Japan's neighbours. In its post World War II constitution Japan renounced the right to wage war.

The brigade is the latest component of a growing marine force that includes helicopter carriers, amphibious ships, Osprey tiltrotor troop carriers and amphibious assault vehicles, meant to deter China as it pushes for easier access to the Western Pacific.

China, which dominates the South China Sea, is outpacing Japan in defence spending. In 2018, Beijing which claims a group of uninhabited islets in the East China Sea controlled by Tokyo, will spend 1.11 trillion yuan ($176.56 billion) on its armed forces, more than three times as much as Japan.

The activation of the 2,100 strong ARDB takes Japan a step closer to creating a force similar to a US Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) able to plan and execute operations at sea far from its home base.

"They've already demonstrated the ability to put together an ad hoc MEU. But to have a solid, standing MEU capability requires concerted effort," Grant Newsham, a research fellow at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies.

"If Japan put its mind to it, within a year or year and a half it could have a reasonable capability."

Newsham, who helped train Japan's first amphibious troops as a US Marine Corps colonel liaison officer assigned to the ground self-defense force (GSDF), said Japan still needs a joint navy-army amphibious headquarters to coordinate operations as well as more amphibious ships to carry troops and equipment.

Japanese military planners are already mulling some of those additions. Its air self- defence force wants to acquire F-35Bs to operate from its Izumo and Ise helicopter carriers, or from islands along the East China Sea, sources have told Reuters.

The United States last month deployed its F-35Bs for their first at-sea operations aboard the USS Wasp amphibious assault ship, which is based in Sasebo. The Kyushu Port is also home to Japan's Ise and close to the ARDB's base. 

Separately, the GSDF may acquire small amphibious ships up to a 100 metres  long to transport troops and equipment between islands and from ship to shore, two sources familiar with the discussion said. Japanese ground forces have not operated their own ships since World War Two.

"The idea is to bring forces and gear on large ships to the main Okinawa island and then disperse them to other islands on smaller vessels," said one of the sources, who asked not to be identified because they are not authorised to talk to the media.

PARIS — French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe on Thursday said the government would not budge on its plans to shake up state rail operator SNCF after two days of train strikes that snarled rail traffic across the country.

Trains were operating "almost normally" on Thursday as rail workers resumed service after the first instalment in a three-month rolling strike, seen as the biggest challenge yet to President Emmanuel Macron's reform agenda.

"I can confirm that we are determined to pursue this reform," Philippe told France Inter radio, saying it was necessary "to ensure the efficient operations and quality of the SNCF".

But unions claimed they were gaining support for their challenge to plans to phase out the guaranteed jobs for life and early retirement currently enjoyed by rail workers.

Under the government's plan, new hires at the debt-ridden SNCF would no longer have right to these benefits.

It would also turn the SNCF into a corporate entity whose shares would be owned by the state — a move unions see as a first step toward privatisation, despite the government's denials.

A poll last Sunday by the Ifop survey group found that 46 per cent of respondents found the strike "justified", with a slim majority of 51 per cent saying the government "should complete the reform as it has been announced".

"I'm convinced that we have public opinion on our side, and that train users support us," Laurent Brun, head of the train branch of the CGT union told CNews TV.

Organisers of a support fund for striking workers, meant to compensate their lost wages, claimed late Wednesday that more than 220,000 euros ($270,000) had been raised from some 6,500 donators.

Analysts have warned that support for the strikers could grow the longer it goes on, with unions vowing to down tools two days out of every five for the next three months.

'We might be next' 

For Guillaume Durand, a transport specialist at Paris-based consultancy Wavecom, support for Macron's attempts to make the SNCF more competitive could flounder on a growing wave of social discontent.

Students are blocking campuses to protest more selective entry requirements for universities, while energy workers, garbage collectors and Air France pilots — who are seeking a 6 per cent raise — are also striking.

"We could have a movement that gains momentum, including more than just the SNCF," Durand told AFP.

"Everybody is pointing to this and saying 'Watch out, we might be next on the list so let's take action'," he said.

"I think we're looking at a movement that's going to be fairly serious, where the outcome is very clearly far from certain."

Union leaders want the strike actions to converge in a repeat of huge 1995 strikes against pension reforms which crippled the country for weeks, eventually prompting the government to back down. 

Some are even hoping for a re-run 50 years later of the famed May 1968 anti-government demonstrations by students and workers, which marked the beginning of the end of Charles de Gaulle's presidency.

PARIS — Millions of French commuters suffered a second consecutive day of travel chaos on Wednesday as striking rail workers locked horns with President Emmanuel Macron’s government in a dispute over reforming the state-owned SNCF railways.

Commuters in and around Paris pushed their way onto few trains running during rush-hour, while many platforms in the French capital’s busiest stations lay empty.

SNCF data at midday showed the number of drivers on strike fell slightly on Wednesday, though more signalmen and conductors had walked out than a day earlier. Across the company, including administrative and sales staff, the participation rate dipped. 

Macron wants to transform the heavily indebted rail company, which loses 3 billion euros ($3.7 billion) each year, into a profit-making public service able to withstand foreign competition when its monopoly ends in 2020 in line with European Union rules. 

Unions reject plans to end rail workers’ special privileges, including job-for-life guarantees and early retirement, and complain the government is paving the way for privatising the SNCF.

Macron, a former investment banker, has set a summer deadline for the overhaul to be completed.

“I don’t understand the strike. Some say we want to break up public services and it’s simply wrong,” Julien Denormandie, a junior minister in Macron’s government, told BFM TV.

In taking on the rail unions, Macron is treading where past presidents have either failed or steered clear, determined to cement his image as a fearless and indefatigable moderniser of the French economy.

The battle’s outcome could define Macron’s presidency with trade unions, already badly bruised by his success in liberalising labour regulations last autumn, also needing to score a win.

Time to talk debt 

Other protest movements are also simmering, with university students, public workers, garbage collectors and pensioners all angry at Macron’s social and economic reform agenda. 

So far, though, they have shown no sign of coalescing into a single, more potent movement, just as France prepares to mark the 50th anniversary of the May 1968 anti-establishment revolt that transformed the nation.

On Wednesday, only one in seven high-speed TGV trains were running — slightly more than on Tuesday — and one in five trains on overground commuter lines into Paris, similar to Tuesday’s levels. The unions plan to strike two days in every five over the next three months.

“It’s not our aim to frustrate rail passengers. Our goal is to find a way out of this row, to sit down and negotiate and find real solutions,” said Roger Dillenseger of the UNSA-Railways union.

The SNCF said the participation rate fell to 30 per cent of staff from 34 per cent on Tuesday. However, the number of striking conductors and signal-box workers — considered essential for running services — climbed by 8 and 7 percentage points respectively.

Before the strike, the government offered small concessions, including delaying the opening of SNCF networks to foreign companies as long as legally possible and dropping plans to push some aspects of the reform through by decree.

It has, however, said it will not discuss how much of the SNCF’s 46 billion euro debt pile the Treasury will assume until a deal is reached on employment benefits, prompting union accusations that it negotiating “with a gun to their heads”.

Transport Minister Elisabeth Borne faced calls on Wednesday from within Macron’s ruling Republic on the Move  party to address the issue earlier. 

“It is important that the government says how, when and under what conditions the SNCF’s debt will be taken over,” Jean-Baptiste Djebarri, parliamentary rapporteur on SNCF reform, told Europe 1 radio. 

BERLIN — German prosecutors filed a request to a regional court on Tuesday for the extradition of former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont to Spain, where he faces charges of rebellion over the region's campaign for independence.

The move is a further blow to Puigdemont, who has been held in prison in the northern German town of Neumuenster for just over a week after being arrested in Germany on March 25 soon after crossing the border from Denmark.

Puigdemont is being held in normal prison conditions, along with other suspected criminals, according to people who have visited the former Catalan president.

His detention leaves the independence movement weaker than it has been in years, with almost all its leaders behind bars before trial or in exile. 

Prosecutors in the state of Schleswig-Holstein said Spain's extradition request was admissible because accusations of rebellion included carrying out an anti-constitutional referendum which could cause violent clashes.

"This has a comparable equivalent in German law," said the prosecutors in a statement, adding that in Germany this counted as high treason.

They said the Spanish charge of misuse of public money — for an unconstitutional referendum — could also be punished in Germany. 

Prosecutors argued that Puigdemont, 55, should be detained as there was a danger he would try to escape. 

He fled Spain five months ago for Belgium after Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy dismissed his regional administration and imposed direct rule from Madrid in response to the Catalan parliament declaring independence. 

The charges, made via a European arrest warrant issued by Spain, over the organising of an illegal referendum on independence in October, could lead to 25 years behind bars. Asked about the decision at a news conference in Algiers, Rajoy said Spain would respect the decision of German courts.

"We are countries that deeply respect the rule of law... and the separation of powers," he said.

German government stays out 

The German government has rejected calls from Puigdemont's lawyer to get involved. "It is in the hands of the courts," a justice ministry spokesman said. 

Puigdemont's lawyers argue that a referendum is not a criminal offence.

"Carles Puigdemont and his lawyers are confident there will be an independent and appropriate assessment by the regional high court to which they will present detailed objections to the extradition," his lawyer, Till Dunckel, said in a statement.

On Monday, Puigdemont appealed against the charge of rebellion in Spain's supreme court, saying he did not commit any acts of violence to justify this. He also appealed against the charge of mis-use of public funds. 

A spokeswoman for the Higher Regional Court in Schleswig said work had started on the case. She declined to put a time on its decision, but said she did not expect it to take months.

Initially, the court will decide on whether to issue an extradition arrest warrant.

"If the two criteria are fulfilled — that an extradition does not immediately appear inadmissable and that there is reason for arrest — that is a danger of flight — then the conditions for an arrest warrant are met," she said.

The Spanish court aims to try a total of 25 Catalan leaders for rebellion and other charges. International arrest warrants are active against four other politicians who fled abroad last year, including Clara Ponsati, a former Catalan education minister who is fighting extradition from her home in Scotland. 

Five separatist leaders are in jail in Spain pending trial. They all deny any wrongdoing. 

The Catalans say they will not get a fair trial in Spain and are being prosecuted for their political beliefs. Spain denies this and says their actions violated the Spanish constitution.

BEIJING - China appreciates North Korea’s “important efforts” to ease tension on the Korean peninsula, senior Chinese diplomat Wang Yi told the North’s foreign minister on Tuesday, hours after he called on all sides to stay focused on talks.

China has traditionally been secretive North Korea’s closest ally, though ties had been frayed by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and missiles and Beijing’s backing of tough U.N. sanctions in response.

But in late March Beijing vowed to uphold its friendship with its isolated neighbor and won a pledge from Kim to denuclearize the peninsula during a meeting with President Xi Jinping.

China’s Foreign Ministry gave only hours notice that Wang, a State Councillor and China’s Foreign Minister, would meet North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho.

Wang told Ri that Xi and Kim had reached an important consensus on achieving a peaceful resolution to the peninsula nuclear issue during Kim’s visit to Beijing, his first known trip outside North Korea since he assumed power in 2011.

“China appreciates North Korea’s position working toward denuclearization of the peninsula and its important efforts to ease the situation on the peninsula, and supports meetings between the leaders of the North and South and between the North and the United States,” Wang said, according to a Chinese Foreign Ministry statement.

The ministry cited Ri as saying that North Korea would “maintain close strategic communications” with China on peninsula-related issues, and that the Kim-Xi meeting was an “important juncture” in the development of bilateral relations.

North Korea’s official news agency KCNA had said that a delegation headed by Ri left on Tuesday to meet other foreign ministers in Azerbaijan and to visit Russia, but made no mention of China.

“DISRUPTIVE FACTORS”

Earlier in the day, Wang said during a joint news briefing with visiting Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis that he hoped a planned meeting in May between Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump would “increase mutual understanding”.

“But historical experience tells us that at the moment of easing of the situation on the peninsula and as first light dawns on peace and dialogue, frequently all manner of disruptive factors emerge,” Wang said.

“So we call on all sides to maintain focus, eliminate interference, and firmly follow the correct path of dialogue and negotiation.”

Cassis said that he would discuss with Wang the role that Switzerland could play in the strategic meetings between Kim and “some important partners on the international level”, but he did not elaborate.

A time and place have not been set for the Trump-Kim meeting to discuss denuclearization. North and South Korea will hold their first summit in more than a decade on April 27, South Korea has said.

Kim’s predecessors, grandfather Kim Il Sung and father Kim Jong Il, both promised not to pursue nuclear weapons but secretly maintained programs to develop them, culminating in the North’s first nuclear test in 2006 under Kim Jong Il.

North Korea has said in previous, failed talks aimed at dismantling its nuclear programme that it could consider giving up its arsenal if the United States removed its troops from South Korea and withdrew its so-called nuclear umbrella of deterrence from South Korea and Japan.

Some analysts have said Trump’s willingness to meet Kim handed Pyongyang a diplomatic win, as the United States had insisted for years that any such summit be preceded by North Korean steps to denuclearize.

China had largely sat on the sidelines as North Korea improved relations with South Korea, raising worries in Beijing that it was no longer a central player in the North Korean issue.

The two Koreas have seen a significant thaw in ties since the North’s participation in the South’s Winter Olympics in February.

Kim Jong Un and his wife on Sunday made a surprise appearance at the first of two concerts performed by a South Korean art troupe this week in Pyongyang, titled “Spring is Coming”.

Kim proposed another concert in South Korea later this year with performers from the North in response to this week’s shows in Pyongyang by K-pop artists, South Korea’s Culture Minister Do Jong-whan told reporters in Seoul.

It was the first time a North Korean leader had attended a South Korean performance in the capital.

SAN JOSE — Costa Rica’s President-elect Carlos Alvarado Quesada ran up a bigger-than-expected margin of victory in Sunday’s run-off election, leading a progressive coalition to beat back a stiff run from a Christian conservative singer.

The 38-year-old former minister in the outgoing government is now set to join French President Emmanuel Macron and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern as democratically elected heads of state before turning 40.

Like them, Alvarado Munoz ran unabashedly on a centre-left platform.

He has faced much stronger headwinds by backing gay marriage in the conservative Central American country. In the closing days of the campaign, a poll showed 7 in 10 Costa Ricans were opposed to such unions.

His decisive 20-point margin of victory offers hope to fellow progressives elsewhere in Latin America working to defeat an evangelical-led backlash that has grown alongside expanding acceptance of gay and lesbian rights.

It also gives hope to his supporters that he can unite the country that decades ago gave up a standing army and is known worldwide for its ecological stewardship.

Alvarado Quesada, who earned his masters in Britain and worked for three years for Procter & Gamble in Panama, told Reuters in a recent interview that he saw a larger trend in the divide exposed after a January court ruling called on Costa Rica to legalise same-sex marriage.

“I think it’s a reflection of what’s happening in the region and the world,” he said. “People are experimenting across the world with movements that push single-issue or populist agendas.”

Alvarado Quesada said he decided to step up after seeing what happened in the United Kingdom with the Brexit vote, what happened in Colombia after the referendum on peace and seeing Western democracies face populist or fundamentalist movements.

Before deciding to run for president, Alvarado Quesada served as social development minister and then labour minister under Luis Guillermo Solis, whose centre-left party he worked for in his 20s.

As a younger man, he also sang in a college rock band called Dramatika.

Following college, his first job was at a sports gambling call centre, where he took bets on mostly US teams in order to make enough money to buy his first guitar. 

Costa Rica’s future president later turned to fiction writing, publishing four books over the course of a decade, including his novel “The life of Cornelius Brown”.

The married father of one will now face the difficult task of forging consensus in a country where large swaths of people have been polarised by faith-based appeals, a development many voters described as unprecedented.

But his supporters point to his reserved nature as a strength, arguing his instinct toward negotiation will serve the country well after a hard-fought campaign. 

Alvarado Quesada will take office on
May 8.

Paris - French state railway operator SNCF warned Sunday of major disruption caused by strikes this week that analysts say will be a major test of how much weight the country's once fearsome trade unions still carry.

Train drivers and other staff are set to walk off the job from Monday night at the start of three months of planned stoppages against reform plans announced by President Emmanuel Macron and his government.

From Tuesday, rubbish collectors, some staff in the electricity and energy sector and employees of Air France are also set to strike in the biggest wave of industrial unrest since Macron's election last May. Flight crews and ground staff for Air France also announced a further two-day strike for April 10 and 11.

In an update on Sunday, the SNCF said travel would be "very disrupted" on Tuesday, with one in eight high-speed TGV trains operating, around one in five regional trains and major cancellations on suburban commuter trains.

SNCF chief Guillaume Pepy warned that some train lines might be closed due to the walkouts and that problems might accumulate over time because stoppages have been announced for two out of every five days until June 28.

"Three days after normal services resume, another strike sequence will start. It'll completely disorganise our work," he told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper, warning the network's 4.5 million daily users to brace for problems.

- 'Incomprehensible' -

Unions are reacting to government plans to revamp the debt-laden and loss-making SNCF which they believe -- despite consistent denials from the government -- is a first step toward privatisation.

Under the proposed changes, new rail employees will not benefit from a special status historically given to railway workers, which guarantees them a job for life and early retirement.

Forty-eight percent of staff are set to join the strike Tuesday and a second day on Wednesday, including 77 percent of drivers, the SNCF said.

Transport Minister Elisabeth Borne, interviewed in Sunday's edition of the Parisien newspaper, took a harder line than in previous statements, calling the industrial action "incomprehensible".

The government has so far had public opinion on its side over the rail reform, but a survey on Sunday showed sympathy growing for SNCF staff.

A new poll by the Ifop group showed that 46 percent of respondents found the strike "justified", up four points from two weeks ago.

Only a slim majority, 51 percent, thought the government "should complete the reform as it has been announced".

- Comparisons with Thatcher -

Unions have so far failed to block any of the changes proposed by Macron since his election last year, a victory that virtually swept away the Socialist Party, long the political champion of the labour movement.

But by taking on the SNCF, a totem of French unionism, Macron has inevitably drawn comparisons to a previous turning point in Europe's industrial relations: Margaret Thatcher's showdown with British coal mine unions in 1984.

The 40-year-old centrist appears to be seizing the opportunity provided by his surprise victory in presidential and parliamentary elections last May and June when he stood as a reformist candidate promising to transform France.

Like controversial labour market reforms last October, he has promised to push through the SNCF overhaul by executive order to avoid a lengthy debate in parliament, while also pressing ahead in other areas.

"His tactical approach is working. By constantly opening new fronts, he renders opposition to the previous one obsolete," said political expert Philippe Braud.

With French opinion divided between "resignation" and "deep conviction that things must move forward," Braud said, "the planets were aligned: So many reforms have been aborted over the past 20 years".

- 'Knocking over everything' -

France's union landscape has also shifted markedly, with the hardline CGT recently dethroned as the biggest player by the more moderate CFDT, which has refused calls for a "convergence" of the various protests.

Union membership has also plummeted, with just over 11 percent of French workers unionised according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, one of the lowest levels in the EU.

However unions continue to punch above their weight and even CFDT chief Laurent Berger has warned Macron against "knocking over everything", describing his method as "You discuss, I decide".

Hot on the heels of loosening France's strict labour rules to make hiring-and-firing easier, Macron appears eager to take advantage of his momentum.

CGT head Philippe Martinez, whose union is the biggest at the SNCF, said last week that France was poised for another May 1968, when a series of strikes snowballed into a social revolution.

Fifty years ago, "there was no general call for a strike, but a chain reaction of mobilisations that came together," Martinez told L'Humanite newspaper.

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