The leader of France's opposition Socialists, Martine Aubry, on Tuesday formally announced her bid to challenge President Nicolas Sarkozy in next year's presidential election.

"We know that France is going through a difficult time, but I am resolved to fight with all my strength to give her a future again," she told a gathering of supporters in the northern town of Lille, where she is mayor.

President Nicolas Sarkozy announced Friday that "several hundred" French troops will be withdrawn from Afghanistan before the end of 2011.

"Between now and the end of the year, early next year, several hundred French soldiers will return to France in full agreement with the decision taken by the American president," Sarkozy told a news conference at the close of a two-day European Union summit.

U.S. authorities Thursday charged firms in France and the United Arab Emirates for conspiring to export components for attack helicopters and fighter jets to Iran without a license.

The Justice Department said that among the individuals and five corporate entities charged were Aerotechnic, based in Pinsaguel, France, its president Philippe Sanchez and sales manager Luc Teuly. They remain fugitives.

France will carry out a progressive pullback of its forces in Afghanistan, with a timetable similar to that announced by for U.S. troops, the president's office said Thursday.

President Nicolas Sarkozy's office said in a statement that NATO member France would make a "progressive" withdrawal of troops in Afghanistan "in a proportional manner and in a timeframe similar to the pullback of the American reinforcements."

France stepped up pressure Monday on the United Nations to speak out against Syria's deadly crackdown on protests, but Russia again said it opposed "interference" in the country's internal affairs.

"The U.N. Security Council cannot remain silent for much longer," French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said during a joint press conference in Paris with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

The organizers of the Paris International Air Show were forced to order aerospace companies appearing at the event to shut off devices jamming mobile telephone signals, they told Agence France Presse on Tuesday.

On Sunday, as exhibitors were setting out their stalls at the Le Bourget aerodrome north of Paris, technicians noticed disruptions to GSM frequencies that were scrambling calls, show director general Gilles Fournier said.

President Bashar al-Assad has reached "a point of no return," French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said Monday following the Syrian leader's speech to his troubled nation.

"Some believe there's still time for him to change his ways and commit to a (reform) process," Juppe said after Assad suggested in a televised speech that dialogue could lead to a new constitution.

France's former leader Jacques Chirac is to be tried in September for corruption relating to his time as Paris mayor in the 1990s, a judge said Monday, the first ever trial of a French ex-president.

Presiding judge Dominique Pauthe said the long-delayed trial of the popular politician, now aged 78, would take place in Paris from September 5 to 23.

Several opposition officials have traveled to Paris to discuss with former Premier Saad Hariri the approach that the March 14 forces would take after the formation of PM Najib Miqati’s cabinet.

An Nahar daily said that among the March 14 politicians who went to France are Phalange party leader Amin Gemayel, MP Marwan Hamadeh and former lawmakers Fares Soaid, Samir Franjieh and Bassem al-Sabaa.

Ousted Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, whose trial begins in absentia in Tunis on Monday, denies all charges against him and hopes his country will "overcome chaos," his lawyer said.

Ben Ali "strongly denies all charges they are trying to press as he never possessed the sums of money they claimed to have found in his office," his Beirut-based lawyer Akram Azoury said in a statement released on the eve of the trial.