The International Maritime Bureau said on Monday that a French-owned oil tanker that went missing off the Ivory Coast over the weekend is believed to have been hijacked by pirates.

The owners of the Luxembourg-flagged tanker with 17 crew on board lost communication with the ship on Sunday, Noel Choong, head of the bureau's Kuala Lumpur-based piracy reporting center told Agence France Presse.

Twitter's unmatched platform for public opinion is emboldening Gulf Arabs to exchange views on delicate issues in the deeply conservative region, despite strict censorship that controls old media.

The authorities have been attempting to limit the damage by handing out jail terms to some whose tweets have been deemed offensive in the Muslim states, including in Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

The United Arab Emirates is to put on trial 94 Islamists accused of plotting against the Gulf state, attorney general Salem Kobaish announced on Sunday.

He said the accused, whose arrests were announced in July, will go on trial for "having created and led a movement aimed at opposing the basic foundations on which the state's political system is built and at seizing power."

French President Francois Hollande said on Tuesday that his government does not intend to keep forces in Mali, but will remain until security is restored and "terrorists" eliminated.

"France has no intention of staying in Mali, but we have an objective, that is when we leave there should be security in Mali, a legitimate authority, an electoral process and no more terrorists threatening the integrity of the country," Hollande told reporters in Dubai.

French President Francois Hollande, on a visit to the Gulf, Tuesday defended his country's intervention in Mali, saying it had prevented the African country from being overrun by "terrorists".

Speaking to reporters as he arrived at Peace Camp in Abu Dhabi -- his country's only military base in the region -- Hollande said it will take at least another week before an African force is deployed in Mali.

French President Francois Hollande will head to the United Arab Emirates next week where he will push the Gulf state to buy Rafale fighter jets, a French diplomatic source said Wednesday.

France is keen to make its first foreign sale of the Rafale, which has struggled to find buyers to support a project that has cost tens of billions of euros.

Prosecutors in the United Arab Emirates have begun interrogating women linked to a group of Islamists held for allegedly plotting to seize power in the Gulf state, news agency WAM said on Wednesday.

The UAE announced in July it had dismantled a group it said was plotting against state security and challenging the constitution.

The United Arab Emirates has rejected a request from Egypt for the release of 11 of its nationals detained for suspected links to Egypt's ruling Muslim Brotherhood, the Gulf News newspaper reported on Saturday.

The case has sparked a sharp deterioration of relations between Abu Dhabi and Cairo, which had already been strained since the election of Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi as Egyptian president last June.

Egypt has set up a council to negotiate the release of its nationals arrested in the UAE reportedly for spying and raising funds for President Mohamed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood party, local media said Thursday.

The council, formed by the newly-empowered senate, will "work towards the release of Egyptian doctors in the Emirates and investigate the circumstances of (their) arrest," newspapers quoted senate president Ahmed Fahmi as saying.

Turkey signed on Thursday an agreement with the United Arab Emirates for the development of coal fields in southern Turkey to generate electricity.

The agreement between Abu Dhabi-based TAQA and Turkey's state-run power company EUAS marks the biggest Arab investment in the Turkish energy sector, a senior energy ministry official told AFP.