French Unions continue campaign

Trade unionists vowed to launch legal action against the Sarkozy administration on Friday after it deployed riot police to break up pickets at refineries and ordered striking refinery workers back to work "in the interests of national defence."

Heavily armoured police soon cleared pickets and a barricade of burning tyres, injuring at least three people in the process.

Yet, as soon as police opened the site, strikers blockaded access roads, halting all traffic.

The aggressive operations were mounted after Seine-et-Marne police chief Michel Guillot issued an emergency decree which included the refinery as a vital part of the country's military machine.

Total CGT official Charles Foulard said that the bully-boy tactics were a reminder of the days of nazi collaborator Petain.

"We are outraged, we are scandalised," Mr Foulard said as he announced that the union would file a legal complaint against the government's thuggery.

He stressed that the goal of the blockade was not to paralyse the country. It was "a cry for help" to the government to open negotiations on its drive to pass a reform Bill that would see the minimum retirement age rise from 60 to 62 by 2018 and set the threshhold for full pension payments at 67.

"We are not at war, we are not in a state of siege, so the defence code does not apply in this case," another CGT activist said.

A quarter of the country's petrol stations are still closed and drivers faced limits on how much fuel they can buy across the the country.

And all 12 oil refineries are still either closed or blockaded, despite the Grandpuits site near Melun in Seine-et-Marne being forced open.

The Senate voted yes to Mr Sarkozy's pensions reform Bill and it could be on the statute books as early as next week.

An opinion poll published on Friday by the BVA institute and broadcast by Canal+ television showed that a large majority of French voters were opposed to the government's Bill and supported the strikes by a margin of 69 per cent to 29.

Unions have vowed to continue their strikes and street protests after the Bill is passed and have scheduled two more days of nationwide protest for October 26 and November 6.

Secondary school students have announced that they willtake to the streets in force again on Tuesday.