December 2, 2003	Tuesday	Shawwal 7, 1424

PARIS, Dec 1: Many French embassies, consulates and cultural centres around the world were shut or offering minimum service on Monday as diplomats staged their first ever strike to protest against foreign ministry budget cutbacks.

Turn-out varied from country to country, with 90 per cent of diplomatic staff in Italy observing the strike but only 20 per cent in Moscow. In many capitals, staff declared themselves officially on strike but continued to carry out their functions.

“In practically all our missions as well as here in the central administration the strike movement has been followed, but to varying degrees,” said foreign ministry spokesman Herve Ladsous.

All 9,200 of the ministry’s permanent employees, plus 6,000 teachers in French lycees abroad and several thousand locally-hired staff were urged to stop work for the day to demand an end to cost-cutting that recently saw the ministry run out of paper.

At a demonstration of foreign ministry staff in front of the French Senate in Paris, around 250 protesters chanted slogans calling for bigger budgets and criticising Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin.

“De Villepin: without money, you won’t get very far,” went one of the refrains. “It’s my first time as a demonstrator — at the ministry we don’t make much a habit of it,” wryly observed one diplomat in the crowd who declined to be named.—AFP