When Mr Blair visited an Islamic boarding-school, Rezar Rizky, 13, was cheered when he asked him: "Will you ask your best friend George Bush to stop the war in Iraq?" The Prime Minister replied: "I think we will not agree about Iraq and the decision to remove the government there."

He added: "Whatever we thought about the original decision to remove Saddam [Hussein], today we should work with the UN and with other countries to make sure Iraqi people get the same rights as we have in the UK and you have here."

Anissa At Muzir, 17, said she agreed with some of what Mr Blair said but disagreed with his views on Iraq. "His answer is not so satisfactory," she said. "Justice should be applied in a true sense."

Another student asked Mr Blair how he would feel if he were an Iraqi civilian who had had relatives killed in the conflict.

Mr Blair replied: "You feel very strongly that what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan was wrong. I understand that. But in those countries now people can vote and their government should decide what's right and what is wrong."

Mr Blair was due back in Britain early today after a seven-day tour which also included Australia and New Zealand but was overshadowed by speculation about how long he could carry on as Prime Minister. Yesterday, allies of Gordon Brown, John Prescott and Mr Blair played down reports that the Prime Minister planned to announce his departure timetable at this autumn's Labour Party conference. They insisted no deal had been struck between Mr Blair and Mr Brown.

Downing Street has trumpeted an agreement struck with Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the Indonesian President, for the two countries to cooperate against terrorism and improve understanding between the Islamic and non-Islamic worlds.

Unions and students have vowed to continue their protests if the government presses on with the CPE, which aims to encourage firms to hire workers by allowing them to fire employees aged under 26 without stating a reason during a 2-year trial period.

"The president knows the trade unions' attitude. He knows the frustrations of many youths," opposition Socialist party leader Francois Hollande told RTL radio.

Making clear he thought Chirac would sign the law, he said: "Do you think the many students and workers who have been fighting against this text for months ... will understand the president's decision? Do you think that will be a factor of appeasement, a solution for the country?"

VILLEPIN'S FUTURE IN THE BALANCE

If Chirac withdraws the law, he stands a bigger chance of halting the protests that have swept France and sometimes turned violent in the past few weeks.

But such a move would undermine Villepin, who has fiercely defended the law and made it a centerpiece of his efforts to cut youth unemployment.

Business leaders fear France's image will be damaged if protests continue and that investment and tourism could suffer, particularly because the crisis has erupted so soon after rioting by angry youths in French city suburbs late last year.

New data on Thursday showed the February unemployment rate stuck at 9.6 percent, one of the highest rates in Europe. Joblessness among under 25-year-olds fell slightly from just below 23 percent to 22.2 percent.

Chirac, 73, has repeatedly backed Villepin over the CPE. But the protests have left Villepin's future in the balance and a climbdown on the law could sink his hopes of running in next year's presidential election.

The contract has caused divisions within the ruling UMP party, headed by Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, a likely rival to Villepin in the 2007 presidential race -- when Chirac is not expected to seek a third term.

The UMP parliamentary group on Tuesday backed Sarkozy's proposal that the government should not rush to enforce the law.

Student demonstrators and unions have urged Chirac to send the law back to parliament -- stripped of the CPE articles that were attached to it.

Unions have called new protests and strikes next Tuesday and have warned the government that millions more will turn out unless Chirac changes the law.

Hopes that France's constitutional watchdog body, the Conseil Constitutionel, would cut through the Gordian knot of an increasingly muddled, bad-tempered and ideological dispute were dashed last night when council members declared that the new equal opportunities law, including the disputed contrat première embauche (CPE) or first-job contract, did not infringe the constitution of the Fifth Republic.

President Chirac now has nine days in which to decide whether to sign and promulgate the law. His Prime Minister, and long-time protégé, Dominique de Villepin, has made it clear that he will resign, plunging the French centre-right into crisis, if the President backs down before the mass demonstrations, strikes and forced university and school closures which have disrupted France in the past three weeks.

Sources at the Elysée Palace said M. Chirac would propose - probably in a television address tonight - a solution which might appeal to all sides. Copying the government tactics which helped to end the May 1968 student and worker revolt, he is expected to propose a round-table conference of government, trade unions, student groups and employers.

He is likely to promise that any agreement on jobs law for the young reached by such a "Grenelle" - so-called after the succesful two-day talks in the Ministry of Labour in the Rue de Grenelle in 1968 - would substitute for M. de Villepin's hated youth contracts.

One of the Gaullist ministers involved in the first "Grenelle" 38 years ago was Jacques Chirac, then the junior labour minister.

It was precisely M. de Villepin's refusal to consult the "social partners" on the CPE which has helped to stoke the intensity of the opposition among trade and students' unions. President Chirac may now, in effect, sign the youth contracts into law and then call negotiations afterwards.

His hopes of saving M. de Villepin's face - and his own - could yet dashed. Tempers are running high. The French left - from students' groups to the centre-left Socialist party - have the scent of political blood in their nostrils.

Both trades union and student leaders have refused to enter talks with the government until the CPE is withdrawn or suspended. It remains to be seen if all, or any, of the many mutually suspicious groups involved would heed M. Chirac's proposal and call off the protests, including nationwide strikes and marches on Tuesday.

In a series of hit-and-run actions yesterday, students blocked railway lines at the Gare de Lyon in Paris, and at Rennes, Limoges, Brest, Marseilles, Lille and other provincial stations. There were also blockages bystudents on the Boulevard Périphérique, Paris, and on the road approaches to Nantes, Rennes, Grenoble, Limoges, Lille and several other cities.

The "first jobs contract" was intended by M. de Villepin as a way of reducing France's 23 per cent unemployment among young people. It has been rejected by student unions of the hard and moderate left and by all five trades union federations, as an "ultra-capitalist" attempt to deny young people the kind of job security enjoyed by their parents.

The CPE would provide a two-year trial period in which workers aged 26 or younger could be fired without explanation (but with compensation ). M. de Villepin argues that this will make it easier for small and medium-sized companies to offer jobs to unqualified or underqualified young people.

Derrar, who says he only meant to scare the girl, acted to avenge himself after he was humiliated in a fight with her boyfriend, investigators believe.

He is accused of "acts of torture and barbarity that unintentionally led to death" and faces a possible life term in jail.

Tony Rocca, 23, is accused of abetting Derrar by guarding the door of the bin-room where the crime took place, and also risks life in jail.

Sohane's death provoked national outrage, and a campaigning group - Neither Whores nor Slaves - was set up to draw attention to the mistreatment of women in France's high-immigration city suburbs.

"There are loads of girls in the estates who get hit or humiliated, and no one gives a damn. When a girl gets smacked in the face, no one bats an eye. It's just normal," said Sohane's sister Kahina in an interview with Le Point magazine this week.

"In every estate there is some girl who has been beaten or raped but who refuses to go to the police. It was only when my sister was burned alive that people began talking," she said.

The trial is due to last a week.