FRANCE: French truckers began blocking roads in the country yesterday as their unions remained locked in crisis pay talks with haulage bosses.
The first blockade was reported near the northern city of Lille, where protesters with small lorries and cars blocked access to a large wholesale food market, witnesses said. Police were at the scene but had not intervened.
In Bordeaux, in the south-west, the CFDT and CGT unions issued a statement calling their members to a blockade to be set up yesterday evening.
In Paris, truckers remained locked in talks with bosses and have threatened to block roads across the country in a dispute over pay and conditions.
The moves put France on the brink of a massive freight disruption similar to those that paralysed the country in the 1990s.
Meanwhile, as firefighters in Britain and Northern Ireland go into a fourth day of strikes today, British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair has stepped into the dispute after his most senior cabinet colleagues were accused of taking contradictory stances on pay.
Mr Blair will put the government's case in a live televised address from Downing Street .
His intervention comes after Fire Brigades Union leader Mr Andy Gilchrist called for a "single, authoritative" Government message. Mr John Prescott, the cabinet minister in charge of the dispute, had signalled support for a deal worth up to 16 per cent over two years.
But within hours Chancellor of the Exchequer Mr Gordon Brown dismissed that as "simply not affordable".
In Derry, firefighters abandoned their picket lines on Saturday night to rescue two men from the scene of a head-on road crash.
More than a dozen officers using specialist equipment cut the victims from the wreckage of the accident near Dungiven. Two children were also seriously injured in the collision. - (Reuters, PA)