China said Thursday it disapproved of "one-sided" sanctions and pressure on Syria after France raised the prospect of a new raft of punitive measures against President Bashar Assad's regime.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius on Wednesday said he would consult with Western allies to prepare tough new sanctions against Assad's regime, as battles between troops and rebels rage in Syria.

France plans to ask the United Nations Security Council to make U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan's Syria ceasefire plan mandatory, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Wednesday, as British Foreign Secretary William Hague said that Syria was "on the edge of a collapse."

Fabius called on fellow Security Council members to "take recourse to Chapter Seven (of the U.N. charter) to make the measures in the Annan plan obligatory."

France on Wednesday called for a complete halt to arms sales to Syria amid growing Western criticism of Russian weapons exports to President Bashar Assad's regime.

"We are calling for a complete halt to arms exports to the Syrian regime asked by joint United Nations-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan before the Security Council last week," French foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said.

With a single tweet, France's first lady managed Tuesday to take a swipe at her man's ex, put herself publicly at odds with the president, and throw a spanner in the works of his Socialist party.

Valerie Trierweiler posted an apparently innocent message on Twitter wishing a relatively unknown politician good luck in his bid to win a seat in the National Assembly in Sunday's second round parliamentary vote.

The al-Qaida-inspired gunman who killed seven people in France was a gifted student who had a difficult childhood and showed signs of a violent streak, according to details of a police probe quoted Tuesday in Le Monde.

Mohamed Merah was shot dead by police on March 22 at the end of a 32-hour siege at his flat in the southern French city of Toulouse.

France on Tuesday joined the United States in raising concerns that new massacres were being prepared in Syria as regime forces pounded for the eighth straight day the town of Al-Haffe.

"We share concerns about the preparation of new massacres," foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said, adding that French officials were heading to Moscow for talks on the crisis on Wednesday.

The father of al-Qaida-inspired gunman Mohamed Merah, who was shot dead by French police in March after going on a killing spree, has filed a murder suit in Paris, his lawyers said Monday.

"This is a suit against unnamed persons for murder with aggravating circumstances concerning those who gave the orders at the top of the police" during the assault on Merah's flat in Toulouse, said lawyer Isabelle Coutant-Peyre.

France said it would hold talks with Russia on its idea of an international Syria conference, as it urged the new head of the Syrian National Council to unite the opposition.

Paris congratulated Kurdish activist Abdel Basset Sayda on his naming as the SNC's new leader at the weekend, calling on him to work to bring the diverse regime opponents together.

A key suspect in the French illegal political funding scandal known as the "Karachi Affair" has been questioned by investigators in Geneva, Swiss prosecutors said Monday.

Abdulrahman el-Assir, a Lebanese-born businessman subject to a French arrest warrant issued last November, was questioned on May 30 but was not placed in detention, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office said.

France said Monday it will hold talks with Russia on its idea of an international Syria conference including Iran and urged the new head of the Syrian National Council to unite the opposition.

"We will have new contacts with Russia this week on the subject," a ministry spokesman, Vincent Floreani, told a press conference.