Paris ? President Jacques Chirac for the first time directly addressed the inequalities and discrimination that have fueled two weeks of rioting across France, saying Thursday that the country has “undeniable problems” in its poor neighborhoods.

Violence continued to slow under state-of-emergency measures and heavy policing, with far fewer skirmishes and fewer cars burned. Police, meanwhile, suspended eight officers, two of them suspected of beating a man detained during the riots.

“Things are calming,” Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said on France-2 television. “But that doesn’t mean it won’t restart.”

Chirac had kept largely silent about France’s worst unrest since the 1968 uprising by students and workers, speaking publicly about the crisis only once in a brief address focused on security measures.

But on Thursday, he said that once order is restored, France will have to “draw the consequences of this crisis, and do so with a lot of courage and lucidity.”

“There is a need to respond strongly and rapidly to the undeniable problems faced by many residents of underprivileged neighborhoods around our cities,” he said at a news conference held with Spain’s visiting prime minister.

“Whatever our origins, we are all the children of the Republic, and we can all expect the same rights,” Chirac said.

But he also pointed a finger at parents, saying “too many minors” have joined the violence, some “pushed to the fore by their elders.”

French firefighters try to extinguish a car Thursday set alight by rioters in Venissieux, a district of Les Minguettes, near the central French city of Lyon as residents look on from a window of their housing complex.

The unrest started among youths in Clichy-sous-Bois angry over the accidental electrocutions of two teenagers, but it rapidly grew into a nationwide wave of arson and nightly clashes between rioters armed with firebombs and police retaliating with tear gas.

The crisis has led to a collective soul-searching about France’s failure to integrate its African and Muslim minorities. Anger about high unemployment and discrimination has fanned frustration among the French-born children of immigrants from former colonies.

Sarkozy, the interior minister, said fear was the worst factor in the troubled areas, and vowed to dismantle gangs and bands of drug traffickers that he said make up a tiny minority but ruin life for everyone else.

“If we get rid of those poisoning the lives of others, we will have taken a first step,” he told France-2.

The government has taken a tough stance on rioters, with Sarkozy saying previously that local authorities were instructed to deport foreigners convicted of involvement.