The departure of Syrian President Bashar Assad is no longer necessary before any political transition in the war-torn country, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said in an interview published Saturday.

The comments mark a softening of Paris' position on the Syrian president as attention turns to the fight against the Islamic State group which staged a series of bloody attacks on the French capital last month, killing 130.

There is an increasing risk of Libya becoming a haven for combatants from Islamic State, even as western nations target the extremist jihadist group in Iraq and Syria, the French defense minister warned in comments published Sunday.

"We see foreign jihadists arriving in the region of Syrte (northern Libya) who, if our operations in Syria and Iraq succeed in reducing the territorial reach of Daesh (Islamic State, IS) could tomorrow be more numerous," defense minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told the Jeune Afrique weekly.

A Paris bar where five people were killed in the jihadist attacks became the first to re-open Friday, with customers defiantly returning to the site where black-clad gunmen sprayed bullets at terrified evening drinkers.

A La Bonne Biere opened for business on a bright and sunny morning in the east of the capital and the first customers pushed through the doors as if everything was -- almost -- normal.

A proposed change to France's constitution would not place a time limit on states of emergency of the kind introduced after the Paris attacks, according to a draft text seen by AFP on Thursday.

However, the draft change to the constitution says exceptional measures taken during a state of emergency -- such as powers of house arrest -- could be prolonged "for a maximum period of six months" after the original state of emergency has expired.

Belgium has charged two new suspects in connection with the Paris massacre last month, prosecutors said Thursday, bringing to eight the number of people it is holding in the case.

"Two other suspects have been charged... in the framework of the Paris attacks," a spokesman for the prosecutor's office told AFP, confirming reports that the two had been arrested on Sunday.

The French presidency confirmed Wednesday evening that French President Francois Hollande will meet al-Mustaqbal movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri on Thursday in Paris.

The Elysee Palace meeting will take place at 10:30 am, the presidency said in a statement.

Belgian police on Wednesday held two people for questioning in connection with the Paris attacks, after carrying out a series of searches in their hunt for key suspects with links to the November 13 massacre.

"This morning five premises were searched in the Brussels region, concerning the ongoing federal investigation into the fugitive Mohamed Abrini and into Ahmed Dahmani who is currently detained in Turkey," the federal prosecutor said in a statement.

President Bashar Assad said peace would only come to war-torn Syria when the West and its Middle Eastern allies "stop supporting terrorists," in an interview aired Tuesday on Czech TV.

Asked what it would take to bring an end to Syria's devastating four-year civil war, Assad said: "When those countries that I mentioned -- France, UK, U.S., Saudi Arabia, Qatar and some other -- stop supporting those terrorists."

France's far-right National Front (FN) faced a ferocious campaign Tuesday to stop it taking two of France's most important regions in elections starting this weekend.

As Prime Minister Manuel Valls called the party a "menace to the economy" and business leaders warned of the "ruin" it could cause, two main newspapers in the north launched an unprecedented campaign to stop its leader Marine Le Pen taking control of the region.

France and Belgium want to improve intelligence sharing between the nine European nations most concerned with jihadist threats in the wake of the Paris attacks, a French government source said Monday evening.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls and his Belgian counterpart Charles Michel agreed to "launch an initiative" when they met at the U.N. climate summit in Paris on Monday, a source in the French premier's entourage said.