Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon Ali Awadh Asiri downplayed Wednesday reports that his country froze a grant to the Lebanese army to purchase French weapons.

“The kingdom will not modify, change or back down” on the agreement, Asiri said in comments published in al-Mustaqbal newspaper.

The Director of the Department of the Middle East and North Africa at the French Foreign Ministry is expected to return to Lebanon Wednesday in a visit that comes three months after a similar trip.

Jean-François Girault will reportedly continue endeavors to lessen the rift between the political arch-foes over the lingering presidential crisis.

Globe-trotting U.S. diplomat John Kerry on Tuesday underwent successful surgery to mend a broken leg, and his doctor hopes to get him up and walking within 24 hours.

"The procedure was uncomplicated, the fracture was fully repaired, and we plan to get him up walking on Wednesday," Kerry's orthopedic surgeon Dennis Burke, from Massachusetts General Hospital, said in a statement.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Tuesday that 110 jihadists who left French territory to fight with the Islamic State group had died in Iraq and Syria.

"More than 860 individuals have spent time in these countries, 471 of which are still there and 110 of which are dead," Valls told the Senate as it studies an intelligence bill approved by lawmakers in May.

Jean-Marie Le Pen on Tuesday announced he was taking France's Front National to court over his spectacular expulsion from the far-right party he founded more than 40 years ago.

"I am contesting my exclusion as a member," said the veteran Le Pen who said he was suing the FN at a court in Nanterre, close to Paris.

A Saudi grant to the Lebanese army to purchase French weapons is reportedly frozen over stances by some Lebanese officials regarding Riyadh's war against Shiite Huthi rebels in Yemen.

French diplomatic sources said in comments published in As Safir newspaper Tuesday that France's chief of Staff General Jean-Pierre Bosser expressed belief that Saudi Arabia is delaying the accomplishment of the second delivery of French arms.

Qatar is suing a right-wing French politician for defaming the country "and all its citizens" after he linked the Gulf emirate to "terrorism" following the deadly Charlie Hebdo attack.

In an apparently rare legal action of a state suing an individual, Qatar has filed papers against Florian Philippot, a vice-president of the National Front, in a French court for defamation.

European powerhouses France and Germany on Monday called on the EU to revise its plan to admit asylum seekers landing in Europe, saying there was insufficient "balance".

"Deep discussions are necessary at the European level" to achieve a balance between "responsibility" and "solidarity", said a joint statement from the French and German interior ministers.

The captors of Frenchwoman Isabelle Prime, kidnapped in war-ravaged Yemen on February 24, have posted the first video of her since her abduction.

In the 21-second tape posted on YouTube, seated on the ground and dressed in black, Prime appeals to the French and Yemeni presidents to take action to secure her release.

A brawl broke out in the early hours of Monday morning between Sudanese and Eritrean migrants in the northern French port of Calais, resulting in 24 injuries, 14 of which required hospital treatment.

According to the emergency services, the fight began after a makeshift tent was torched and escalated quickly into running battles with iron bars.