Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague on Saturday blamed President Bashar Assad's regime for the breakdown in talks between Syria's warring sides, calling the situation a "serious setback" for peace.

"The failure to agree an agenda for future rounds of talks ... is a serious setback in the search for peace in Syria, and the responsibility for it lies squarely with the Assad regime," Hague said in a statement.

French President Francois Hollande welcomed on Saturday the formation of a new cabinet in Lebanon, urging the international community to support it.

“Today Lebanon has a new cabinet with full powers to face the challenges awaiting the country,” Hollande said in a released statement.

Three young sisters died Friday in a fire which engulfed their apartment in the northeastern suburbs of Paris, injuring seven others including several firefighters, officials said.

The girls, aged eight, 11 and 18, were with three other siblings when the blaze broke out in their eighth-floor apartment in the municipality of Sevran, rescuers said.

France said Friday it was sending 400 more troops to the Central African Republic as concern grows over the country's horrific violence.

After a meeting of the top French defense committee, President Francois Hollande said Paris was boosting its troop presence in the CAR to 2,000.

French police have opened a probe into a complaint from actress Julie Gayet, whose affair with President Francois Hollande made global headlines, of "endangerment" by the paparazzi, a judicial source said Friday.

The source said the complaint for "endangering the lives of others" had been taken up by Paris prosecutors, but provided no other details.

French police have detained an Egyptian national on suspicion of carrying explosives on board a Paris-Venice night train, Besancon prosecutor Alain Saffar told Agence France Presse on Thursday.

The man, who is 33 and lives in Italy, was taken off the train late Wednesday and placed in custody after customs officials who had boarded the train at the French city of Dijon confiscated a plastic bottle wrapped in aluminium foil.

The race is on to find hundreds of troops for the EU's military mission in the troubled Central African Republic, the French head of the operation said Thursday.

"We are working with a sense of urgency," said General Philippe Ponties who took up his post as the mission chief for the force earlier this week.

Barack Obama praised France's President Francois Hollande as a leader of "courage" Tuesday, and wined and dined his solo guest at a lavish state dinner.

Hollande, caught in a scandal over his messy split with partner Valerie Trierweiler, has seen his approval ratings plummet to rock bottom at home over his failure to restore economic prosperity.

A French Military delegation will arrive in Lebanon next week to follow up discussions over the Saudi grant to the military institution to purchase French weapons, An Nahar newspaper reported on Wednesday.

According to the daily, the delegation will tackle with Lebanese high-ranking military officials the mechanism of handing over arms to the Lebanese army.

French President Francois Hollande, speaking alongside his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama, said Tuesday that the two allies had resolved their differences over American digital eavesdropping.

Leaders from many U.S. allies, including Germany's Chancellor Angel Merkel, were angered by intelligence leaker Edward Snowden's revelation that the United States monitors their telephone calls.