Amnesty International accused French police on Thursday of continued ill-treatment, shootings and killings and said there were long delaysin acting against suspect officers. Herve Berger, deputy general secretary of the human rights watchdog, said he met French Justice Minister Jacques Toubon this week but the ministers of the interior and defence, who is responsible for the paramilitary gendarmerie police, had sent representatives. ``There is a desire for dialogue. The door to the justice ministry is open, but that to interior and defence (ministries)is ajar,`` Berger told a news conference in Paris. Amnesty said laterin a statement dialogue had been satisfying and should continue. It said it was told of plans to improve French justice procedures and police training. Berger said Amnesty raised concern that a patternof ill-treatment, shootings and killings, particularly of non-Europeans and juveniles as highlighted in an October 1994 report, was continuing. David Braham, the report's author, said: ``In 1994, we quoted 29 casesof judicial delays, 11 of which were for incidents involving firearms and the rest for beatings and ill-treatment. Of these 29, more than half are still under investigation three years later.`` Braham said it took the French courts more than five years to sentencea policeman for beating up a Senegalese boxer and two years to sentence another policeman for raping a Tunisian woman detained at the border with Italy. Other incidents included the killing of Todor Bogdanovic, an eight-year-old Roma boy from Serbia, who died when police fired at his family's car as it crossed the French border at night in a mountain area favoured by illegal immigrants.

   
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