Paris, Dec. 16: French President Nicholas Sarkozy on Monday escaped an attempt on his life, when a man armed with a knife and Taser stun gun was arrested.

According to The Sun, police wrestled the 25-year-old to the ground as he tried to break into the Elysee Palace, the French President's official residence. Cops found the weapons inside his military-style jacket.

Sarkozy was inside at the time, meeting Montenegro's Premier Milo Djukanovic.

His security guards are treating the lunchtime incident as an attempt on his life.

Paris - Two people have died and some 90,000 households were without electricity on Monday following a powerful weekend storm that left much of central France buried in snow.

On Sunday, a 50-year-old woman lost her life after her vehicle skidded on a snowy road near the town of Lavoute-sur-Loire and plunged into the icy Loire River.

In addition, a 58-year-old Swiss man hiking with snowshoes in the Jura Mountains was caught in an avalanche and killed. His wife was gravely injured in the accident.

Paris - As French President Nicolas Sarkozy prepared to meet with representatives from the country's auto industry later on Monday, the head of Renault, Carlos Ghosn, said emergency government loans were necessary for the sector to survive the economic crisis.

"What we are demanding from the state is some reasonable financing, over 2 to 3 years, at interest rates between 4 and 5 per cent," Ghosn said in an interview published Monday in the daily Le Figaro.

The car industry is very "credit-intensive," Ghosn said, with two of every three cars purchased on credit. "If the finance crisis continues, you will see one producer after the other fail," he warned.

Paris - French bank Societe Generale said Monday it had suffered only "negligible" losses in the 50-billion-dollar securities fraud allegedly engineered by a leading Wall Street broker.

In a statement the bank said its exposure to Madoff Investment Securities LLC, and the so-called Ponzi scheme run by its head, Bernard L Madoff, was "below 10 million euros" (13.46 million dollars).

Paris  - Participants at an international conference on peace and security in Afghanistan, which ended Sunday evening in Paris, described the outcome as positive.

While no resolutions were expected, Afghanistan and its neighbours pledged to work closely on security issues, increase border security and combat drug smuggling, according to a joint statement issued after the meeting.

According to German diplomats, the goal of the conference was to strengthen regional ties, which are necessary to bring peace to Afghanistan.

Paris, Dec. 14 : Envoys from Afghanistan, its neighbours and the world''s great powers are meeting here today to discuss ways to ease Afghanistan's socio-economic crisis.

States around Afghanistan, especially Pakistan and Iran, are likely to be told to help in Kabul''s attempt to regain control of the war ravaged and economically deprived land.

India's Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma, Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, Richard Boucher and Iran''s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki will be some of the participants at the meeting.