The ambassadors to Lebanon of the five permanent United Nations Security Council members held talks on Monday with President Michel Suleiman on the current security situation in Lebanon.

U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon Derek Plumbly said after the meeting that the five countries support the president's efforts to ease the tensions and put an end to the security chaos.

Prime Minister Najib Miqati did not present his resignation in light of the assassination of Internal Security Forces Intelligence Bureau head Wissam al-Hasan, reported Al-Joumhouria newspaper Monday.

It said that the premier did not speak of resigning to President Michel Suleiman or the cabinet.

French President Francois Hollande urged on Saturday his Lebanese counterpart President Michel Suleiman and Prime Minister Najib Miqati to avoid any political vacuum in the country and for the cabinet to continue its tasks.

“It's very important that Lebanon doesn't fall in a political vacuum... The cabinet must carry on with its tasks,” Hollande said in a letter conveyed to Suleiman by French Ambassador to Lebanon Patrice Paoli.

A new cyberespionage tool linked to the Flame virus has been infecting computers in Lebanon, Iran and elsewhere, security researchers said Monday.

Kaspersky Lab, which was credited with revealing the Flame virus earlier this year, dubbed the new malware "miniFlame," and said it was "a small and highly flexible malicious program designed to steal data and control infected systems during targeted cyber espionage operations."

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem Al-Thani said Monday that the gas-rich Gulf state had no political motivations behind its business investments in France.

"Qatar is not a country with great political ambitions ... and it wants no political role from its investments in France," Sheikh Hamad said at a press conference in Doha.

Women could rescue Japan's chronically underperforming economy if more of them went to work, the female director of the International Monetary Fund said Saturday.

Christine Lagarde said Japan's shrinking and greying workforce, which has left the country struggling to pay welfare bills, could really benefit from an injection of female talent.

Five months after losing re-election, an unshaven French ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy appeared Thursday at a New York banking conference and reportedly said he looked forward to a "new life."

Sarkozy spoke for about 50 minutes at the invitation of Brazil's BTG Pactual bank in Manhattan's luxury Waldorf Astoria Hotel, where tight security kept the event well out of the public eye.

Nicolas Sarkozy was due in New York on Thursday to address a banking conference, with opinion split on whether this is the start of a post-presidential career on the lecture circuit or if the French right-winger has secret plans to make a political comeback.

Sarkozy himself was giving nothing away.

A French prosecutor said Thursday he would pursue charges of attempted murder and terrorism against seven of the 12 suspected Islamist extremists arrested at the weekend.

Francois Molins, the Paris prosecutor, said the seven had been part of an "active terrorist cell" that posed the biggest threat France had faced since the mid-1990s, when the Algerian-based GIA was dismantled.

Leaders from the 75-nation Francophonie were to begin their biennial summit Friday in DR Congo, a country that encapsulates Africa's many woes but also its growing stake in a body searching for a raison d'etre.

The Organization Internationale de la Francophonie's decision to hold its 14th summit in Kinshasa raised eyebrows given the government's poor democratic credentials and human rights record.