THE French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, who has laboured to improve French relations with Israel, said he “can’t stand” the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and called him a liar in a chat with US President Barack Obama.

The European Union expanded its sanctions against Syria, imposing asset freezes and travel bans against five more military and government officials.

Mauritanian prosecutors called the Christmas Eve murder of four French tourists a terrorist act and said security forces were hunting three suspects believed to be members of a regional al-Qaida-linked network.

Lebanon’s rival parties, their nation in political deadlock and facing violence on its northern and southern flanks, are meeting outside Paris today for unusual, long-awaited talks.

FRANCE accused Iran yesterday of pursuing a secret military nuclear programme, drawing a swift rebuke from Tehran ahead of talks next week on a Russian proposal for resolving the dispute.

The managing editor of a French daily newspaper that republished caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad has been fired, the paper said today, as debate over the drawings mounted among French Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

French journalist Florence Aubenas and her Iraqi assistant have been freed after more than five months as hostages in Iraq, the French Foreign Ministry said today.

Eight French soldiers were killed and 23 others injured today by Ivory Coast government troops bombing a rebel-held town in northern Ivory Coast, a Defence Ministry official said.

Just 10 days after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon enraged French leaders by urging France’s Jews to leave for Israel, a group of 200 French Jews arrived to start a new life in the Jewish state, with Sharon at Tel Aviv’s airport to greet them.

US authorities have handed over six French detainees from Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba to French authorities, officials said in Paris.

AN appeal by Israel’s leader for French Jews to flee for their safety prompted an outcry in France yesterday, with lawmakers and Jewish groups urging Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to mind his own business.

Iraqi interim President Ghazi al-Yawer threatened today to use a “very sharp sword” to fight insurgents and anyone else threatening the security of the country.

France and Iraq have restored diplomatic relations that were severed 13 years ago during the Gulf War, the French Foreign Ministry said in Paris.

REBELS and the main opposition party withdrew from Ivory Coast's power-sharing government after security forces violently quashed an anti-government protest, killing over 30 protesters demanding implementation of a peace deal, officials said.

France today said it would send accident investigation experts to Egypt following the crash of a charter aircraft with 148 people on board, including 134 French tourists.

French Foreign Ministry staff – diplomats included – staged an unprecedented strike today in protest at planned budget cuts.

AN explosion set a French oil supertanker ablaze off the coast of Yemen yesterday, triggering conflicting explanations of an internal blast and a bomb attack from a small boat.