Thousands of Armenians staged a procession to a hilltop memorial above the capital on Tuesday to mark the 97th anniversary of the genocide of their kin by Ottoman Turks during World War I.

From early morning, crowds of people joined the annual procession, carrying candles and flowers to lay at the eternal flame at the center of the monument commemorating the mass killings.

European countries are discriminating against Muslims for demonstrating their faith, especially in the fields of education and employment, rights group Amnesty International said Tuesday.

In a report focusing on Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland, Amnesty urged European governments to do more to challenge negative stereotypes and prejudices against Islam.

The European Union could sanction the governments of Sudan and South Sudan if they continue to attack each other, France's Cooperation Minister Henri de Raincourt said Monday.

"If matters don't evolve favorably we could consider establishing sanctions against those who don't respect the conditions for resolving the crisis," he said during EU foreign ministers' talks in Luxembourg.

France's President Nicolas Sarkozy hunted far-right votes Monday after losing to Socialist Francois Hollande in a first round vote that saw a shock breakthrough by the anti-immigrant National Front.

The right-wing incumbent moved quickly to woo the 18 percent of voters who backed the FN's Marine Le Pen, saying they deserved an answer to their concerns, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel called her showing "alarming".

President Nicolas Sarkozy Monday reached out to the 18 percent of voters who backed far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in France's first-round vote, saying an "answer must be given" to their concerns.

"We must respect the voters' will, it is our duty to listen," Sarkozy told journalists. "There was this crisis vote that doubled from one election to another, an answer must be given to this crisis vote."

Twitter users turned Sunday's French presidential election into a battle between a green Hungarian wine and a red Dutch cheese in a bid to get round tough laws banning result predictions.

The #RadioLondres hashtag was the top France trend on Twitter during the first-round presidential vote, in homage to World War II codes broadcast to Resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied France from the BBC in London.

Queues of French expatriates voting in the first round of presidential elections formed outside polling stations in London on Sunday.

With around 300,000 French residents, London is often described as France's sixth biggest city, and the vast majority of Britain's 72,000 registered French voters are casting their ballots in the capital.

Socialist champion Francois Hollande stamped his authority on the French presidential race Sunday, winning the first round of polling and setting up a May 6 run-off with incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy.

Hollande won between 28 and 29 percent of the vote in the first round, to Sarkozy's 25.5 to 27, according to estimates compiled from ballot samples by several polling agencies and obtained by Agence France Presse from multiple sources.

France and German welcomed the decision by the United Nations Security Council on Saturday to send U.N. observers to monitor the fragile ceasefire in Syria, warning Damascus to end the violence there.

The two countries reacted after the Council unanimously passed a resolution allowing a 300-strong ceasefire monitoring mission in Syria despite the strong doubts of many Western nations.

French citizens living in Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina began voting early Saturday in France's presidential elections, 19 hours ahead of polls opening in France.

A polling station at the French consulate in Rio de Janeiro opened its doors at 8:00 am local time (11:00 GMT) and was scheduled to close at 6:00 pm (21:00 GMT).