President Francois Hollande told two of his top ministers on Wednesday they should end a public row over France's policy towards its Roma population if they wanted to stay in his government, reports Reuters.
Interior Minister Manuel Valls last week said most of some 20,000 Roma housed in makeshift camps around French cities could never be integrated into French society and so should be "taken back to the border" for transfer back to Romania and Bulgaria.
Housing Minister Cecile Duflot, a leader of the ecologist Greens coalition partners to the ruling Socialists, denounced Valls for betraying the core human rights values that France prided itself on, and demanded that Hollande reprimand him.
Seeking to heal a widening rift between centrists and left-wingers in his coalition over the issue, Hollande took both Duflot and Valls to task at his weekly cabinet meeting.
"I insist that all ministers pay full mind to their mission, their behavior, how they express themselves and of course, how they act," Hollande told the meeting, according to presidential aides.
Read more of this report from Reuters.