Nine EU countries led by France and Belgium called Thursday to list the personal information of airline passengers as part of efforts to curb terrorism and prevent young people going to conflict zones.

"One of the most useful tools to trace such people, when they go to Syria or elsewhere and when they come back, would be a PNR (Passenger Name Record) system," French Interior Minister Manuel Valls and his Belgian counterpart Joelle Milquet said in a statement.

French President Francois Hollande will visit Israel and the Palestinian territories by the end of the year, the country's foreign minister said Tuesday, as a drive to reach a Middle East peace deal gathers pace.

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are currently in Washington as part of a fresh U.S.-led initiative to negotiate a peace deal between the two sides after a three-year hiatus.

France's foreign minister demanded Tuesday that Egypt's ousted president Mohammed Morsi be freed, describing the political crisis as "very critical" after bloody unrest in Cairo.

"We condemn the violence... We call for dialogue and for the release of president Morsi," Laurent Fabius told reporters.

France's rush to tax nationals who inherit from Swiss residents will backfire by spurring many wealthy Frenchmen to move to Switzerland, taking their tax euros with them, observers say.

France "has shot itself in the foot, several times," Claudine Schmid, a French parliamentarian of the rightwing UMP party, told Agence France Presse Monday.

French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault on Monday declared elections in Mali a "great success" for France, which sent troops to the African nation this year to dislodge Islamist groups.

Mali voted on Sunday for a new president in the first election since a military coup in March 2012 helped plunge the country into chaos.

Seven men drowned Sunday off France's Mediterranean coast due to a combination of high winds and strong currents, police and rescue services said.

One woman remained in hospital in a coma on Sunday evening, they added.

Iranian President-elect Hassan Rowhani personally stopped the development of a clandestine nuclear weapon in 2003, a former ambassador to the country said Saturday.

Writing in the International Herald Tribune newspaper, Francois Nicoullaud, France's ambassador to Iran from 2001 to 2005, said he believed Rowhani was the "main actor" in persuading the country's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to halt the secret program.

France and Germany called for "innovative" ways to boost European military cooperation in a letter Friday to EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton ahead of a major defense meeting in December.

The letter highlighted Europe's responsibility to ensure peace and security in "today's changing world, with new centers of power and growing asymmetrical security threats, such as cyber security or terrorism".

The French are now free to offend their president if they so choose after parliament lifted an age-old ban on insulting the head of state.

Under the amended law, the president will now have to go to court if he or she feels offended and prove there was defamation, in a much more drawn-out and complicated process.

French authorities have released a man detained this week on suspicion of wanting to go to Syria to fight alongside Islamist rebels, a judicial source said on Friday.

The unidentified 47-year-old was arrested on Tuesday near the eastern city of Belfort but was released late Thursday after investigators found no evidence of a planned departure, the source said.