French President Francois Hollande said Thursday the conditions were "still not right" to go ahead with the sale of two Mistral warships to Russia despite Moscow having backed a new Ukraine peace plan.

Hollande suspended the 1.2 billion euros ($1.5 billion) sale last year as the Ukraine crisis deepened, fearing it would boost Russia's military capabilities and put Paris in hot water with its allies.

France announced Thursday it will sell 24 Rafale fighters plus a frigate to Egypt in a 5 billion euro ($5.7 billion) deal that marks the first foreign contract for the multi-role combat jet.

French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian will travel to Cairo on Monday to sign the contact with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a ministry source told Agence France-Presse.

France's major TV and radio networks were formally rapped by the French broadcast regulator Thursday for serious "breaches" in the way they covered last month's Charlie Hebdo attack and subsequent bloody events.

The warnings were issued for violations including: showing the moment two of the Islamist gunmen cold-bloodedly shot dead a policeman; identifying the two gunmen before police did so publicly; reporting that people were hiding in a Jewish supermarket taken over by a third gunmen; and providing live video feeds of the deadly police assault on the supermarket.

A Muslim party that aims to promote Islamic finance and overturn France's ban on wearing the veil in schools will take part in regional elections next month.

Led by Najib Azergui, the Democratic Union of French Muslims (UDMF) also aims to promote the use of Arabic in schools and "fight against dangerous stigmatization that equates Islam with terrorism."

The Shiite militia that has taken control in Yemen's capital accused Western powers Thursday of trying to exert pressure by closing their embassies, criticizing the hasty exit of diplomatic staff as "unjustified".

In the crisis-hit country's south, Al-Qaida militants overran an army camp and seized weapons following clashes that killed at least seven people.

The leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France on Wednesday began a crunch peace summit in Minsk aimed at ending 10 months of fighting in Ukraine where violence claimed dozens more lives. 

A grave-looking Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko shook hands briefly with Russian leader Vladimir Putin as the two arch-foes came face-to-face for the first time since October to try to thrash out a peace plan.   

Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn on Wednesday lashed out at the focus on his sexual behavior in a French court where he is charged with pimping, saying he was not on trial for "deviant" acts.

The 65-year-old, once seen as a frontrunner for the French presidency, said the idea that his preference for certain practices highlighted in court, such as sodomy, would spur him to seek out prostitutes was "absurd."

Prime Minister Tammam Salam has said that he received French assurances that Paris is continuing to exert efforts to end Lebanon’s presidential deadlock.

He told As Safir daily on Wednesday that he held around 14 meetings with Arab and Western officials in Germany last week “to prove Lebanon's presence on the international scene and shed light on the problems that it is suffering from.”

Intense fighting in Ukraine, including a devastating rocket strike on Kiev's military headquarters in the east, killed at least 37 people on Tuesday on the eve of a four-way peace summit.

As diplomats scrambled to finalize a deal to end the 10-month war, pro-Russia rebels sought to encircle railway hub Debaltseve and Ukrainian forces launched a counter-offensive around the strategic port of Mariupol.

French President Francois Hollande said Tuesday he was going to Minsk with the "strong will" to achieve a peace deal on Ukraine at a four-way summit also attended by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The Russian and Ukrainian leaders were also due to be present at the meeting in the Belarusian capital Wednesday, as fighting rages on in the east of Ukraine.