Today, Patrick Dewael, the Belgian Minister of the Interior, criticised France for the way it is dealing with the unrest in the country. Speaking in the Belgian Parliament, Dewael said that contrary to the “confrontational” approach in France, Belgium has a “preventive approach” of so-called “community policing,” which he described as: “Talk first and intervene only when necessary.” Dewael said there had only been 50 incidents in Belgium in an entire week. He strongly condemned a newspaper because it mentioned a weblog which called for disturbances in Brussels next Saturday. “On the whole, however,” the minister added, “the Belgian media have behaved very serenely.”
 
Yesterday, Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson said the “confrontational route” of the French government was wrong: “You don’t confront this with the sort of expression[s] [French Interior minister] Sarkozy used,” Persson said.