Deal Reached To End Strike On France`s Guadeloupe

The deal met protesters` demands for a 200 euro ($252) increase in the lowest monthly salaries.

Unions and authorities signed a deal overnight to end a six-week general strike over wages and the price of staple goods that has paralysed the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe.

The deal met protesters' demands for a 200 euro ($252) increase in the lowest monthly salaries and pegged back the price of dozens of staple items to reduce the cost of living on the island, which is higher than in mainland France.

"It is indeed a relief," France's minister for overseas territories, Yves Jego, told France Info radio.

The government's slow response to the crisis left it looking flat-footed and President Nicolas Sarkozy had feared that the sometimes violent protests would spread to the mainland.

A union leader was killed and shops were burned and looted in the protests. They exposed underlying tensions between workers on the island and a wealthy white minority, many of whom descend from slave-era colonists.

Sarkozy has already come under pressure over pay from mainland France's trade unions. A nationwide strike in January prompted the president to agree to measures to boost spending power, such as targeted tax cuts.

His concessions were a departure from his economic stimulus plans, which are focused on public spending projects such as building roads and modernising rail links rather than easing pressure on consumers' wallets.

But unions say more must be done to help consumers in the face of the global economic crisis and they have called another strike for March 19.

Failure to reach an agreement on Guadeloupe by then could have heightened tensions, but similar protests are hitting the nearby Caribbean island of Martinique and the Indian Ocean island of Reunion, which are also French overseas territories.

In a bid to quell those disputes, Jego said the measures in the Guadeloupe agreement would also apply to the others. But there was no immediate sign of the protests fading.

"It is a first step," Guadeloupe protest leader Elie Domota told reporters. "In the coming months and weeks there will be many other struggles on training, employment ... We remain mobilised."

Sarkozy last month announced separate measures to bring relief to France's overseas territories, which are often dependent on expensive imports from the mainland, and has called for a review of how they are run.