Spain wants to know the conditions it must submit to before requesting any sovereign bailout, Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo said Friday.

"We have to know the conditions, analyse them and then it will be decided," he said in Paphos, a coastal resort in Cyprus where European Union foreign ministers are gathering.

France and Britain have agreed on the need to speed up the transition from President Bashar Assad's regime in Syria to a new government, French President Francois Hollande said on Thursday.

"David Cameron and I are in total agreement -- we must accelerate the political transition (and) help the opposition to form a government," said Hollande, after talks with the British prime minister in London.

The French economy will probably grow by less than expected next year, the OECD's chief economist said Thursday, making it harder for the new government to reduce an excessive public deficit.

"France will be weaker next year," Pier Carlo Padoan told a Paris press conference in response to a question regarding the country's chances of achieving its 2013 growth target of 1.2 percent.

A plainclothes policewoman stood outside the suspected British home of a family shot dead in their car in the French Alps, an Agence France Presse reporter at the scene said on Thursday.

The policewoman was posted outside the spacious detached house in a leafy residential district of Surrey, southwest of London, while a Surrey police spokeswoman said the force was assisting French authorities in the investigation.

French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian is scheduled to visit Lebanon next week to discuss with Lebanese officials ways to provide logistic support for the Lebanese army, An Nahar daily reported on Wednesday.

An Nahar said Le Drian’s two-day visit next Thursday would come as part of a trip to Jordan where he is expected to inspect a Syrian refugee camp on the border with Syria.

Former prime minister Saad Hariri on Tuesday held talks in Paris with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, during which the French official stressed the importance of sparing Lebanon the repercussions of the Syrian crisis.

The meeting tackled the situations in Lebanon, the bilateral ties between the two countries and the latest developments in the region, according to a statement issued by Hariri’s press office.

Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri is expected to hold a meeting soon with Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat in Paris, An Nahar newspaper reported on Tuesday.

The daily said that the first meeting between the two officials since the government of Hariri was toppled in December 2011 and the formation of a cabinet led by Prime Minister Najib Miqati, is likely to be held on Tuesday.

France's foreign minister said Monday Western powers are preparing a tough response in case Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime deploys chemical or biological weapons in its civil war.

Laurent Fabius said: "Our response ... would be massive and blistering."

Thousands of mounted French and Russian actors Sunday recreated a 200-year-old battle at the gates of Moscow that led to the fall of Napoleon and the rise of Russian patriotic fervor.

President Vladimir Putin arrived to oversee the grandiose festivities after seeing his government spend $1.1 million (900 million euros) on a celebration of not only Russian history but also its military and resolve.

A bus carrying Romanian tourists overturned on a highway in southern France on Sunday, killing an infant and injuring about 40 people, with some in critical condition, emergency workers said.

The accident happened around 0730 GMT near the town of Vidauban as the bus travelled towards Nice, police said. The bus veered across the highway after tire problems and tipped over a security barrier onto the incoming lane.