PARIS, France (CNN) -- French senators Wednesday joined the country's National Assembly in voting to extend a state of emergency for three more months amid a wave of rioting in numerous cities and suburbs.The law allows local governments to decide whether to impose curfews to curb the rioting, which has persisted for nearly three weeks. The renewed emergency declaration takes effect on November 21.Only a few cities have imposed the nighttime restrictions, but the violence has eased in recent days."French people want us to re-establish the order of the republic," Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said. "We will answer their expectation, because we can't build a future in violence."Sarkozy has also stepped up calls for France to introduce measures to help minorities find jobs, directly challenging President Jacques Chirac.Boosted by an opinion poll showing strong voter support for his tough response to France's worst civil unrest in almost 40 years, Sarkozy on Wednesday fanned controversy over how to bring disaffected youths into mainstream French society, Reuters reports.Sarkozy has called before for "affirmative action" to tackle higher than average unemployment among minorities.The timing of his appeal, two days after Chirac ruled out such steps in a televised address, underlined their differences."I challenge the idea that we all start at the same starting line in life," Sarkozy told L'Express magazine in an interview."Some people start further back because they have a handicap -- color, culture or the district they come from. So we have to help them," he said.The riots began after the October 27 deaths of two young men of North African descent who were electrocuted when they hid in an electrical substation because they thought police were chasing them.Young people in poorer neighborhoods -- many populated largely by immigrants and their French-born children -- began rioting and burning cars in an eruption of their frustration at the problems of unemployment and discrimination.On Monday, President Chirac stressed in a nationally televised address that there must be respect for the law but said that respect also called for generosity to help the nation's weakest citizens and for a halt to the "poison" of discrimination.He called on a wide range of groups -- parents, businesses, trade unions, political parties -- to honor diversity and to end discrimination.