Paris- The Louvre Museum in Paris set a new visitor record in 2008 as 8.5 million people made their way through its more than 60,000 square metres of exhibition space, the museum said Friday.

That represents an increase of about 200,000 over 2007, and a rise of some 67 per cent since 2001.

The largest age group entering the museum are the young, with those 25 years of age and younger representing 40 per cent of the Louvre visitors in 2008.

Paris - Russia must respect the contracts it has signed to deliver natural gas to Europe, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Thursday in Paris.

"Russia has contractual obligations with the Europeans, and they must be respected," Sarkozy told journalists after a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The French president also urged Ukraine to respect European interests.

"Europe has done a great deal for (Ukraine), because under the French (EU) presidency we obtained the opening of a privileged partnership for Ukraine," Sarkozy said.

Paris - French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday opened an economic symposium in Paris by calling for the "moralization" of the capitalist system.

"We must work, not for the destruction of capitalism - which would be a catastrophe - but for its moralization," Sarkozy said at the opening of the symposium New World, New Capitalism, which he established as a response to the economic crisis.

"Either we re-found capitalism or we destroy it," Sarkozy said as he called for an economic system based on the value of work rather than finance.

Paris - French Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie on Tuesday described as "stupid and revolting" an apparently anti-Semitic attack in which a car was sent hurtling against the gates of a synagogue in the city of Toulouse and then set on fire.

Alliot-Marie told RMC radio that the perpetrators would be found quickly but she refused to say that the attack was related to the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

France has Europe's largest Muslim and Jewish communities, and strife between Palestinians and Israel has in the past provoked a wave of anti-Semitic attacks.

Paris - French President Nicolas Sarkozy left Paris on Monday on a two-day visit to the Middle East in a unilateral attempt to negotiate a ceasefire in the fighting in Gaza.

Traveling in his capacity as co-president, with Egypt, of the Union for the Mediterranean, Sarkozy is scheduled first to meet Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in the resort of Sharm el-Sheik.

He will then travel on to West Bank city of Ramallah to hold talks with the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, before meeting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert late Monday in Jerusalem.

Paris - The man who helped plot the 9/11 terrorist attacks and two others went on trial in Paris on Monday for their alleged involvement in the 2002 suicide bombing of a Tunisian synagogue that killed 21 people.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has admitted being the main architect of the 9/11 attacks, German citizen Christian Ganczarski and Tunisian Walid Nauar, the brother of the suicide bomber, are charged with accessory to murder and face a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is currently imprisoned in the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, is being tried in absentia.