L'Evenement Editor Philippe Chatenet: "No French government ... has been able to solve the Corsican problem"

Investigators on the French Mediterranean island are questioning prefect Bernard Bonnet, France's most senior representative there, in connection with the incident.

Magistrate Patrice Camberou ordered on Tuesday that Mr Bonnet and aide Gerard Pardini be detained for an additional 24 hours.

Bernard Bonnet has lost his job

Mr Jospin earlier sacked Mr Bonnet, who is to be replaced at a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday morning.

But the prime minister rejected the idea of his own resignation.

"I don't see how the question could arise," he told French TF1 television on Tuesday. "We are evidently confronted with a crisis and the problem now is to surmount it."

"Do you really believe it would make sense for me or for any one of my collaborators or ministers to instruct a regional prefect, to instruct the gendarmerie, to set fire to a beach restaurant?" he asked.

"I have been hurt by what has happened...but it will not stop the policy to establish republican law in Corsica."

Mr Jospin also told the French parliament the affair had undermined the authority of the government and damaged its efforts to control violence by Corsican nationalists.

"No member of my cabinet, none of my aides, gave any order or received any information concerning this serious incident before it took place," Jospin told the National Assembly to boos from the opposition benches.

He told the assembly Bonnet had been sacked and announced that a security unit created to stamp out separatist violence on the island - and suspected of involvement in the fire - was being dissolved.

Fire broke out two weeks ago at the beachfront Chez Francis, which, like many other buildings on the island, had been illegally constructed.

Mr Bonnet, known for his tough approach to questions of law and order, was sent to Corsica in February last year after the murder of the previous prefect, with the task of restoring the rule of law on the island.

In a letter to the government released on Tuesday, Mr Bonnet insisted he was innocent and was never informed of the bungled undercover operation.