Paris - With some public sector workers drifting back to work, but the
Paris - With some public sector day workers drifting back to work, but the transport strike still solid, the French government modules and trade union leaders seemed yesterday to be cautiously looking for a way out of the two week old protests, writes Mary Dejevsky. At the centre of government efforts to get the country moving modules again were the railwaymen, modules extcal whose strike 15 days ago triggered strikes and walkouts in the rest of the day php?year=2010&month=3&day=28 public sector. After talks day with the newly appointed mediator, Jean Matteoli, the main railwaymen's branch of the CGT union announced that the signing of a controversial plan to restructure the French national railway company, SNCF, would be postponed for at least extcal a week, until the railways' 1996 budget is finalised. Now, however, he modules is said to php?year=2010&month=3&day=28 be disillusioned.Mr Viannet gives the impression of being day php?year=2010&month=3&day=28 a genuinely old-fashioned union leader, whose style has been cramped in recent weeks by his need day for re- election at the CGT's congress this week.Despite extcal representing between them more than 50 php?year=2010&month=3&day=28 per cent php?year=2010&month=3&day=28 of all extcal modules extcal public sector employees, Mr Blondel, Mr Viannet and Ms Notat are handicapped in their capacity to negotiate with the government by two factors.
He also has a sense for where power lies, agreeing to sit on the committee which has until now agreed the welfare budget, and talking behind the scenes to Mr Chirac even before he was elected president. His legalistic distinction this week between Mr Juppe's "consensus-seeking", and his own insistence on "negotiations" was a characteristic example. At recent demonstrations he has turned up in a smart beige raincoat, red scarf and well-fitting grey cap.He has a rhetorical tendency to sound totally uncompromising, while carefully leaving an escape route. Despite his proletarian gruffness, he is a qualified lawyer, and also a bit of a gourmet; he appreciates the restaurants frequented by the company directors he negotiates with, and is himself a dab hand with the frying pan He also has a certain sense of style. Both, however, have a good deal of personal and professional rivalry which they only reluctantly suppressed in the hope of seeing the end of the Juppe government.Of the two, Mr Blondel is the more deceptive character. Ms Notat's political sympathies are on the left, but her penchant for plain speaking, her willingness to stand alone, and her fair complexion have drawn comparisons in France with "Madame Thatcher".By comparison, Mr Blondel and Mr Viannet, who are in their 50s, come across in style and language as old-style trade unionists, whose preoccupation is the "hard won social benefits" of their members.
They are Marc Blondel, leader of the Force Ouvriere, and Louis Viannet of the CGT.On the sidelines, though, is a figure who is no less crucial to the negotiating process: Nicole Notat, the 47 year old head of the socialist-orientated CFDT, who has been distinguished by her moderate, and often isolated, stand on Alain Juppe's controversial social security reforms. MARY DEJEVSKY Paris As the strikers and the French government edge gradually towards the talks that are inevitably going to end the past two weeks of mass protests, much will depend on the individuals who have emerged as marshals, if not exactly leaders, of the strike movement. With only a small secretariat in Vienna, OSCE members admit they view the coming challenge with trepidation.. Foreign ministers of the 53 participating countries agreed to assume responsibility for overseeing and monitoring elections, monitoring human rights and drawing up arms control agreements.The OSCE role, which was outlined in the peace accord in Dayton, Ohio, marks a leap forward for the organisation, which grew out of the East- West forum that brokered the 1975 Helsinki Act It includes the US and Russia. But details of the agreement remain in dispute and the region remains a potential cause of a new war.Many ministers at the conference had flown in from an OSCE meeting in Budapest, where the row about Mr Frowick emerged. The Serbs are due to hand over to control to an international authority and yield sovereignty to Croatia after two years.