(Adds union call for action Sunday, talks Saturday, Raffarin)
By Paule Bonjean
PARIS, Nov 22 (Reuters) - French truckers' unions rejected pay offers at Friday crisis talks aimed at averting nationwide blockades of the kind that crippled freight and supplies in the 1990s, and called on truckers to ready for action on Sunday.
The government scheduled further talks for Saturday but the two main unions, the CFDT and CGT, accused it of letting things get out of hand and issued a joint statement urging truckers to "mobilise for action".
"This is a clear call to be ready for a strike and action on Sunday night," when truckers are supposed to restart after the traditional weekend restrictions that keep most trucks off the motorways in France.
Raising the tempo dramatically, CGT union negotiator Alain Arquier said it would take "a miracle" to broker a deal on the truckers' demands for higher pay and shorter hours at the fresh talks scheduled to start at 3 p.m. (1400 GMT) on Saturday.
Separately, farmers lifted barricades blocking around 60 food depots since Wednesday evening after farm union leaders announced a breakthrough in talks over a row with supermarkets concerning food and vegetable prices.
RAFFARIN APPLIES PRESSURE
Piling on the pressure, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin praised the FNSEA farm union for agreeing a deal and urged truckers to do likewise.
"I welcome the responsible attitude of the president of the FNSEA, as well as retail industry heads," he said. "We need to see everybody acting the way the farmers and retailers have."
Raffarin's conservative government, which took power in June with law and order as its top priority, vowed to ensure free circulation of goods in France, but did not explicitly say it would deploy riot police to tackle the truckers.
Riot police were already deployed in the key river port of Genevilliers, north of Paris -- a major supply point for fuel, pharmaceuticals and other goods to the French capital.
Leaders of the CGT trucker's union said pay offers presented by road haulage employers on Friday went nowhere near satisfying their demands.
"It's worthless. It's unacceptable," Jean-Pierre Remy, one of the negotiators from the CGT union, said.
Friday's talks were suspended after about seven hours.
Most French trucks stay off the roads at the weekend, and start out again around 10:30 p.m. (2130 GMT) on Sunday night, suggesting that that is the time when blockades would start in earnest if talks fail.
Junior transport minister Dominique Bussereau announced that the government, mindful of the disruption caused by blockades in 1992, 1996, 1997, and a lesser degree in 1999, said all would be done to ensure circulation of key supplies such as petrol.
"That does not mean (the state) will break the strike but it will see that key supplies are ensured, notably oil," he said.
Industry experts said oil supplies at petrol stations could run dry after a week if truckers set up blockades.
France, a major crossroads in Europe, has borders with six countries and ferry links with Britain and Ireland. In 1997, Britain demanded compensation for costs caused to its hauliers.
France's five-month-old government is anxious in particular to avoid a repetition of a wave of social unrest that swept the country in late 1995 and ultimately led to the demise of a previous conservative government two years later.
It has said blockades would be a "stab in the back" for an economy already suffering from the global slowdown. Data on Friday showed the French economy grew by a meagre 0.2 percent in the third quarter of 2002, less than economists had predicted.