French President Francois Hollande will discuss international terrorism when he meets his Philippine counterpart Benigno Aquino this week, a spokesman said Sunday.

The French leader's state visit from Thursday-Friday will focus on climate change but the recent attacks in Paris have also brought security to the forefront, said Aquino spokesman Herminio Coloma.

France's defense minister will visit New Delhi this week in a fresh bid to nail a troubled deal to sell 126 Rafale fighter jets which has been snagged for three years and now faces new questions about its cost.

Jean-Yves Le Drian will meet his counterpart Manohar Parrikar and other officials on Monday and Tuesday to prevent the sale's collapse ahead of an upcoming visit to Paris by India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Jihadists in Libya pose a "direct threat" to Europe, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said in Madrid on Saturday.

"I would like to cite the question of Libya and the direct threat to our security of the creation -- under our eyes and not far from our borders -- of a new haven for the jihadi terrorist," Valls told a gathering of social democrats, according to a transcript of his speech.

A French prosecutor on Friday called for former budget minister Eric Woerth to be acquitted of stolen property charges in a trial sparked by the alleged exploitation of France's richest woman Liliane Bettencourt.

"There are no accusations and no evidence sufficient to prove his guilt," deputy prosecutor Gerard Aldige said, referring to accusations that Woerth used some of the L'Oreal heiress's fortune to finance Nicolas Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn will learn his fate on June 12, a French court said on Friday, as the former IMF chief's trial for aggravated pimping wrapped up.

The three-week trial, held under the glare of the world's media, has exposed sordid details about the sexual habits of Strauss-Kahn, who was once favorite to become French president.

Australia on Friday said France, Germany and Japan were potential partners to design and build its next generation of submarines, in what will be its biggest ever defense procurement program.

As Canberra seeks to replace its ageing Collins Class fleet, Defense Minister Kevin Andrews said all three countries had proven military design and build capabilities and were currently producing submarines.

Bkirki spokesman Walid Ghayad stressed on Friday that the Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi informed a French diplomat, who is following up the presidential deadlock, that the crisis is not only linked to the Christians.

Ghayad said that al-Rahi stressed during a recent meeting with Jean-François Girault, Director of the Department of the Middle East and North Africa at the French Foreign Ministry, that “the head of state is not for the Maronites and Christians alone.”

President Francois Hollande on Thursday stressed the importance of maintaining the country's nuclear deterrent in "a dangerous world", as he detailed France's atomic arsenal for the first time.

His comments were quickly shot down by the French branch of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which said that far from making the world a safer place, they made it more dangerous.

France's prime minister said Thursday he believed that Greece's request for a six-month extension to its EU loan program showed the crisis can be solved "very quickly."

"I take the recent declarations and decisions of the Greek prime minister, in his letter to Europe, as a very encouraging sign that a solution is possible and very quickly," Manuel Valls told parliament.

U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday called on Middle Eastern leaders to stand up to "violent extremism" and stop proxy wars that fuel the rise of terror groups.

"The notion that the West is at war with Islam is an ugly lie," he told the final day of a conference on combating extremism. "And all of us, regardless of our faith, have a responsibility to reject it."