French police to help if airport strikers jam Xmas exit

Airline personnel stand together near a customer service sign in a terminal at the Charles-de-Gaulle airport in Roissy, near Paris, December 20, 2011 as a strike by French airport security staff continues in French airports causing delays at security checks.

PARIS (Reuters) - The French government threatened on Wednesday to deploy police at airports to ensure that striking security staff do not paralyse flights in the travel rush ahead of the December 25 Christmas holiday and end-of-year festivities.

"If the strike continues, the government will see to it that normal transport service is guaranteed," Transport Minister Thierry Mariani said. "We cannot yet again have a situation where the French people are prevented from going home to their families."

"It's peak departure time this afternoon, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow," he told France 2 television.

Some 400 police were put on standby following the failure of talks with security staff who are in turn threatening to step up a protest that began last week at regional airports in the city of Lyon and spread to part of the Charles de Gaulle, the busy international hub on the northern outskirts of Paris.

Henri Guaino, adviser to President Nicolas Sarkozy, said the government would not allow travellers to be "taken hostage" at such a busy time and he saw nothing wrong with deploying police to replace strikers.

So far, disruption had been contained, with reports only of minor takeoff delays and a normal start to Wednesday traffic, Mariani said.

(Reporting By Brian Love)