France confirmed Friday that it would abstain in a Security Council vote on full Palestinian membership of the United Nations, deputy foreign ministry spokesman Romain Nadal said.

"France reiterates its consistent proposal to envisage for Palestine, at this stage, the status of non-member observer state through a U.N. General Assembly vote that would be another step towards admission," Nadal said.

A fan site for a French rugby union team is recovering after hackers mistook it for the website of the German stock exchange and launched an attack.

The allezdax.com website for second division Dax in rugby-loving south-west France was shut down for two weeks after its usual 700 daily page hits -- 1,200 on match days -- skyrocketed to 80,000 because of the attack.

The website of the French satirical weekly that was firebombed after publishing images of the Prophet Mohammed was offline Thursday because of death threats against the Belgian company hosting it.

Host Bluevision took Charlie Hebdo's site offline after it was the victim of a cyberattack following Wednesday's issue featuring Mohammed as "guest editor" and has remained offline after the company received death threats.

France on Wednesday condemned Israel's decision to step up settlement building on occupied land and to withhold tax funds from the Palestinians to punish them for joining U.N. cultural body UNESCO.

"France condemns the decision to accelerate the construction of several thousand homes in settlements in east Jerusalem and surroundings," foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero told journalists.

French police fired tear gas to break up clashes that erupted between Turkish protesters and supporters of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in central Paris on Sunday.

Around 150 young Turks waving their national flag and singing patriotic songs gathered on the Place de la Bastille to protest "terrorism in Turkey" after an attack by PKK rebels that killed 24 earlier this month.

French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero stressed that Lebanon is obligated to fund the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, noting that Prime Minister Najib Miqati had pledged before the United Nations Security Council to fund it.

He told the daily An Nahar in remarks published on Saturday that France will make sure that Lebanon implement its international commitment before the end of the year.

Iceland and France are looking into the possibility of taking French trees endangered by global warming and planting them in Iceland to safeguard them for the future, officials said.

"The main emphasis (in the collaboration) is on research and finding ways to ensure the protection and preservation of the DNA... of the trees in Iceland," Adalsteinn Sigurgeirsson of the Icelandic Forestry Service told Agence France Presse.

Britain's new Defense Secretary Philip Hammond said Sunday that the reputation of Libya's new leaders had been "stained" by the killing of ousted dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

Hammond said he would like to see an investigation into the death of Gadhafi, who was captured alive during the fall of his hometown Sirte on Thursday.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Saturday cited "progress" in ongoing talks to contain the Eurozone debt crisis after a telephone conversation earlier with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

"I spoke to the chancellor this afternoon, there is progress, we are going to work tonight," he told reporters on arriving in Brussels ahead of a European Union summit Sunday.

France's opposition Socialist Party officially anointed Francois Hollande Saturday as its candidate for next year's presidential elections, which opinion polls suggest he will win.

Hollande took the party's nomination over rival Martine Aubry on October 16 in the run-off of France's first ever U.S.-style open primary which galvanized the French left, drawing some 2.8 million voters.