FRANCE: The seven-week-old crisis over the "squatters of Cachan" was resolved early yesterday after four hours of negotiations between the African families and intermediaries who had earlier obtained concessions from the ministry of the interior.
An agreement is to be signed today and the 300 immigrants who have lived since mid-August in the Belle Image gymnasium should move out by the beginning of next week.
The dénouement was a setback for the right-wing interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who has made the fight against illegal immigration a main feature of his presidential campaign.
After police expelled more than 500 squatters from a disused university building on August 17th, Mr Sarkozy told a meeting of the business managers' syndicate MEDEF: "The socialist mayor of Cachan decided to welcome them into a gymnasium. So it's his problem now!" Mr Sarkozy insisted those without papers would be deported from France.
But the interior minister did not foresee the negative press coverage of hundreds of homeless people, mostly women and children, living in unsanitary conditions in a packed gymnasium. Six men went on hunger strike for 44 days, and doctors' reports of irreparable physical damage and possible death lent new urgency to the crisis this week.
Mr Sarkozy was called to order by Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin on October 4th. "It is time we definitively resolve the situation of these men and women," Mr de Villepin said.
In negotiations with Mr Sarkozy's chief of staff, the France Terre d'asile (FTDA) association, founded by the former first lady Danielle Mitterrand, SOS-Racisme and the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA) obtained written guarantees that the squatters would be allowed to apply for legal residence and would not be expelled while their cases were considered.
Two mediators are to witness all deliberations and 158 of the immigrants are to be housed by FTDA. The others will be lodged in government centres.