A French delegation will reportedly arrive in Lebanon in the upcoming weeks to tackle the shipping of $3 billion worth of weapons paid for by Saudi Arabia to the Lebanese military.

According to As Safir newspaper published on Monday, a military-technical French delegation will discuss with the army command the delivery of the first batch of weapons that are expected to arrive in Lebanon in April.

A drone has been spotted over a sensitive military site south-west of Paris, a source close to the inquiry said Sunday, the latest in a series of overflights that has stumped authorities.

The drone was seen late Saturday over a base in Seine-Port from which France's navy communicates with its submarines.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned Sunday that the far-right Front National (FN) party could win the next presidential election in 2017, saying their policies were a "disaster" for the country.

"Do you not think that a FN which wins 25 percent in European elections and maybe 30 percent in local elections... cannot win the presidential election?" Valls said on French television channel iTele.

Police in Mali Sunday hunted for the killers of two Europeans and three Malians in a jihadist attack on a nightclub, as a deadly assault on a U.N. barracks in the north heightened security concerns.

Officers in bulletproof vests patrolled the streets of the capital Bamako, where a masked gunman had burst into La Terrase, a popular venue among expats, spraying automatic gunfire and throwing grenades early Saturday.

Iran has yet to prove to the world it wants a peaceful nuclear program, top U.S. diplomat John Kerry said Saturday, warning with his French counterpart that gaps still had to be overcome to clinch a deal.

"Critical weeks" lie ahead as a March 31 deadline looms to seal a political framework on reining in Iran's suspect atomic program, Kerry said after meeting with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius.

The top-ranking U.S. military officer will pay an extraordinary visit to a French aircraft carrier in the Gulf in coming days as part of a tour of the region, officials said Friday.

General Martin Dempsey was invited by his French counterparts to get a first-hand look at the Charles De Gaulle aircraft carrier, where French warplanes are taking part in the air war against the Islamic State group.

Former French interior minister Claude Gueant was taken into custody on Friday in connection with a probe into the alleged financing by Moammar Gadhafi's Libya of Nicolas Sarkozy's 2007 presidential election campaign.

Investigators discovered a 500,000 euro ($540,000) transfer in Gueant's bank account during a raid in February 2013.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Friday more work needed to be done to reach a deal on Iran's contested nuclear program as a deadline at the end of March looms over the talks.

"There has been progress but as regards the numbers, controls and the length of the agreement, the situation is still not sufficient, so there is more work to be done," Fabius said on the sidelines of an EU foreign ministers meeting in Latvia.

France announced on Thursday it was reducing its troop numbers in the Central African Republic as it gradually hands over to a 8,500-strong U.N. peacekeeping force brought in to contain a deadly sectarian conflict.

"We are going to begin a first cutback phase in the following days, going from 2,000 to 1,700 men," army spokesman Gilles Jaron said.

Syrian leader Bashar Assad is not a "credible" partner in the fight against the Islamic State extremist group, French President Francois Hollande said Thursday after meeting Syria's exiled opposition chief.

Hollande said in a statement after meeting Khaled Khoja that Assad "is the main cause of his people's suffering, and for the rise of terrorist groups in Syria."