PARIS - President Nicolas Sarkozy sent a strong signal to France's disaffected minorities Tuesday by appointing an outspoken advocate of Muslim women and a woman of Senegalese origin to his government.
As junior minister for city policy, feminist activist Fadela Amara will oversee the renovation of dilapidated housing estates where many immigrants live - neighbourhoods similar to the one where she grew up with her Algerian immigrant parents.
Senegalese-born Rama Yade was appointed to the new post of junior minister for human rights, an area Sarkozy has identified as a priority for his month-old government, which he reshuffled and expanded after his conservative party did not fare as well as expected in weekend parliamentary elections.
The nomination of three women with roots in Africa - his current justice minister, Rachida Dati is of North African origin - is unprecedented in France, where previous governments had few non-Europeans.
The appointments highlighted Sarkozy's determination that the corridors of power should better reflect France's ethnic and religious diversity and have more women.
They were also seen as an attempt by the blunt conservative to mend fences with poor immigrant neighbourhoods where he is widely reviled for his tough stance against delinquency and illegal immigration.
In 2005, he described troublemakers in a Paris suburb as "scum'' - a comment that helped fuel three weeks of rioting in housing projects across France.
In another first, a woman was nominated to the Finance Ministry. Former lawyer and two-time cabinet minister Christine Lagarde replaces Jean-Louis Borloo, who was promoted to de-facto deputy prime minister, heading a broad ministry that includes the environment - another of Sarkozy's priorities. Borloo took over from Alain Juppe, who resigned after he lost in the weekend elections.
France has the largest Muslim population in western Europe - about five million - and has wrestled with how to integrate them without weakening the secular traditions that are a foundation of the French state.
Sarkozy's predecessor, Jacques Chirac, pushed through legislation to force Muslim girls to take off their head scarves in public schools - responding to concerns that Muslim fundamentalism and tensions stemming from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were finding their way into classrooms.
Amara is the founder of "Ni Putes, Ni Soumises'' - "Neither a Whore nor Submissive'' - an outspoken group fighting to improve the lot of Muslim women and girls in impoverished neighbourhoods.
A defender of secularism and of the head scarf ban, Amara said Sarkozy respected her independence and outspokenness.
"I am a thorn in the side of both the right and the left, an honest woman who doesn't hesitate to speak my mind,'' she said on France-Info radio.
Malek Boutih, of the opposition Socialists, called Amara "an exceptional woman'' and said the post will give her the power to improve the lives of project dwellers.
