JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN ANCHOR: French Transport Ministry officials spent another day at the negotiating table with truckers, trying to end a protest over soaring fuel prices that has dried up gas stations nationwide. CNN's Jim Bittermann reports.</s>JIM BITTERMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): With the fuel price protest rapidly causing major problems on a nationwide scale, the French government was determinedly trying to stop the demonstration from spiraling out of control. But few have been spared here from the effect of this year's rapidly rising fuel costs and few were openly sympathetic to a government that imposes, after Great Britain, Europe's second-highest fuel tax. And so groups as diverse as forestry workers, ambulance drivers, moving men, and farmers are joining in the protest.</s>GERARD GIRUAT, FARMER (through translator): In terms of business profitability, the situation is catastrophic. Today, with this system where prices are fixed in advance, we have no way to pass on our extra costs onto the sale price of our products.</s>BITTERMANN: With most all the important oil refineries and fuel depots blocked by the protesters, service stations rapidly have run out of fuel. In many parts of the country, regional officials requisitioned the gas pumps and imposed rationing in order to reserve supplies for emergency vehicles. As the government ministers were trying to resolve the growing crisis, the one most directly involved, the minister of transportation, has called on the European Union to put concerted pressure on petroleum exporters, forcing them to recognize, as he put it, that they cannot just do anything they want. And as drivers in other countries were making their own plans to protest high fuel prices, there were indeed growing signs the angry reaction to high prices may not be limited to France. Jim Bittermann, CNN, Paris.
Protest Over High Fuel Prices in France Leading to Gas Shortages