President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Monday that influential Qatar-based Sunni Muslim cleric Yousuf al-Qaradawi was not welcome in France.

Egyptian-born Qaradawi, 86, has been invited to visit next month by the Union of Islamic Organizations in France (UOIF).

French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet held talks Saturday with his Saudi counterpart in Riyadh on bolstering ties between their ministries, SPA state news agency reported.

The meeting focused on "strengthening bilateral relations and existing partnerships between the defense ministries" of the two countries, SPA quoted defense minister Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz as saying.

The older brother of the Toulouse gunman who killed seven people said he was "proud" of Mohammed Merah's actions, police said Saturday.

Abdulkader Merah also admitted being present when the scooter used in the killings was stolen, even though he had said he knew nothing of his brother's criminal intentions.

French officials rejected charges that intelligence failures let a young man kill seven people, as the crack police unit that finally killed the gunman faced criticism of their operation.

Several security experts in Israel were scathing of the French police's handling of the siege, with one specialist calling it a disgrace.

France's prime minister on Friday rejected accusations his government could have prevented the multiple murders by an Islamic militant who was supposedly being watched by intelligence services.

Francois Fillon said security officials knew Mohammed Merah, who died in a hail of police bullets, was a radical Islamist who had visited Afghanistan but insisted there was no reason to suspect he was planning an atrocity.

Al-Qaida-linked group Jund al-Khilafah has claimed responsibility for shootings this week in France, according to a statement posted on jihadist websites on Thursday.

"On... March 19th, our brother Yousef the Frenchman carried out an operation that shook the foundations of the Zionist Crusaders... and filled their hearts with terror," said the statement apparently referring to the shooting of an Israeli-French teacher and three children at a Jewish school in France.

Israel was set up as a haven for Jews whose lives were threatened, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday as he met the families of four people killed in a French shooting attack.

Three French-Israeli children and a teacher, who were gunned down on Monday morning at a Jewish school in southern France, were buried in Jerusalem on Wednesday during a funeral attended by thousands.

A fringe candidate for next month's French presidential election on Wednesday alleged that the Queen of England owes her fortune to drugs money laundered by "Jewish bankers in The City".

Jacques Cheminade, an independent, is one of 10 candidates who has been cleared by France's Constitutional Court to run in the April 22 first round of the battle to unseat incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy.

President Nicolas Sarkozy said Wednesday that acts of terror would not succeed in dividing France, home to the biggest Muslim and Jewish communities in Western Europe.

"Terrorism will not succeed in fracturing our national community," he said in a TV address as police in Toulouse tried to negotiate the surrender of a self-declared Islamist militant holed up in a flat after a series of killings.

A homemade bomb exploded outside the Indonesian embassy in Paris early Wednesday, causing some serious damage but no injuries, a source close to the enquiry said.

Witnesses saw three men leave a package near the building in the west of the French capital.