Tourists Flee Clashes on Guadeloupe

Clashes between striking workers and local police that sent tourists fleeing may have been quelled on the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe after the French president promised a new financial package.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy made a televised appeal Thursday night for an end to the violence and announced a 580 million euro ($730 million) injection of funds to aid development.

Roadblocks had been put up by strikers protesting high prices and low wages, whose work stoppages have brought commerce and daily life to a near-standstill in recent weeks.

Guadeloupe police tore down roadblocks on Thursday, enabling tourists to get off the island. Police reported no clashes overnight but said groups of young people had erected new roadblocks in some areas.

The leader of the Guadeloupe protests said it was too early to say whether Sarkozy’s announcements were anything more than “attention-getting” measures. One union activist was confirmed dead in the violence.

Meanwhile, tourism officials on another Caribbean island are expressing dismay over a recent spate of robberies targeting cruise ship passengers.

Nathan Dundas, president of the Antigua and Barbuda Cruise Tourism Association, told Antigua Today that passengers from four separate cruise ships –the Caribbean Princess, Azamar, Costa Atlantica and Thompson Destiny- were robbed. And he suggested that local authorities are not doing enough to safeguard tourists.

“It’s getting to be frustrating. We have been trying to get the police to help but it seems as though all our efforts were wasted,” an upset Dundas told the newspaper.