Syria's Bashar Assad is not the West's partner in the fight against terrorism but an ally of Islamic extremists wreaking havoc in Syria and Iraq, French President Francois Hollande warned Thursday.

"Assad cannot be a partner in the fight against terrorism, he is the de facto ally of jihadists," he told a Paris gathering of ambassadors from around the world.

Francois Hollande on Tuesday installed a former banker and ally as economy minister in an emergency reshuffle seen as the "last chance" to haul France out of the biggest crisis of his presidency.

The top members of the government remained unchanged, but three rebel ministers who had publicly attacked Hollande's economic policy were not in the line-up as the president seeks to quell dissenting voices in his team.

France was thrown into fresh crisis on Monday after President Francois Hollande told his prime minister to form a new government, following a high-profile show of insubordination by the country's firebrand economy minister.

The president of the self-declared pro-Russian People's Republic of Donetsk claimed on Sunday French military "experts" were joining separatist forces battling government troops in eastern Ukraine. 

"Tomorrow, we will receive officers from France. They are specialists ready to fight with us," Alexandre Zakhartchenko said at a Sunday press conference. 

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif will meet EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton on September 1 in Brussels to agree a framework for renewed nuclear talks, Iran said on Sunday.

From the rescue plane which took them on a one-way journey to France, two Iraqi refugees revealed tales of rape and fear at the hands of Islamic State that forced them to flee their homeland with nothing.

Rene, who did not want to give his last name, said the Islamic extremists currently rampaging through Syria and Iraq were as terrifying as they were sophisticated in their communication methods.

Britain, France and Germany have launched a fresh bid at the U.N. to end six weeks of violence in Gaza, after Israeli warplanes killed three top Hamas commanders, inflicting a heavy blow on the movement's armed wing.

The European initiative on Thursday came as fighting flared on the ground and an Egyptian-led effort to broker peace talks teetered on the verge of collapse.

President Francois Hollande said on Thursday that France had delivered weapons to rebels battling the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad "a few months ago."

The deliveries took place "a few months ago, when the Syrian rebels had to face both the armies of the dictator Bashar Assad and this terrorist group Islamic State," Hollande told reporters on a tour of the French island of La Reunion.

The head of the international police organization Interpol on Thursday condemned the beheading of U.S. journalist James Foley and called for a global response to the threat posed by Islamic extremists.

"The barbaric murder of James Foley by the Islamic State group underlines the depths of its depravity as it wages its campaign of terror across Syria and Iraq," Interpol chief Ronald Noble said in a statement.

U.S. President Barack Obama called for a joint effort to eliminate the "cancer" of jihadist terror in Iraq and Syria on Wednesday, after Islamic State militants murdered an American journalist.

Obama said the entire world was appalled by the beheading of 40-year-old reporter James Foley, which the IS fighters videotaped and published on the Internet.