Two veiled women were hauled off from a Paris protest within hours of the new ban. Their unauthorized demonstration, on the cobblestone square facing Notre Dame Cathedral, was rich with both the symbolism of France's medieval history and its modern spirit of defiance.

While some see encroaching Islamophobia in the new ban, President Nicolas Sarkozy's government defended it as a rampart protecting France's identity against inequality and extremism. Police grumbled that it will be hard to enforce.

"The law is very clear. Hiding your face in public places is cause for imposing sanctions," Interior Minister Claude Gueant said Monday at an EU meeting in Luxembourg. He said it defends "two fundamental principles: secularism and the principle of equality between man and woman."

The law affects barely 2,000 women who cloak themselves in the niqab, which has just a slit for the eyes, and the burqa, which has a mesh screen over the eyes, and it enjoyed widespread public support when it was passed last year.

AP