Two German tourists and an Australian have been rescued following two days in the sea in the central Philippines after their boat capsized while they were island hopping, the coast guard said Friday.

Ralf Harald Auer, 54, his son Thomas Auer, 20, and Australian family friend, Joshua Marsh, were taken to hospital and treated for bruises and dehydration before being released, said Chief Petty Officer Venerando Celis.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a key figure who has long sought to bridge political and sectarian divides in his war-scarred country, arrived in Germany on Thursday for treatment after he suffered a stroke.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said Talabani, 79, was in the country for medical care.

Europe will have to work "very hard" to maintain its generous welfare system and remain competitive, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a newspaper interview Monday.

"If Europe today accounts for just over 7.0 percent of the world's population, produces around 25 percent of global GDP (gross domestic product) and has to finance 50 percent of global social spending, then it's obvious that it will have to work very hard to maintain its prosperity and way of life," Merkel told the Financial Times in an interview.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat is scheduled to travel to France to meet with a number of officials, reported As Safir newspaper on Saturday.

He is expected to hold talks with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius on Monday.

German prosecutors said on Friday they believed Islamist extremists were behind a botched bomb attack at Bonn train station.

The federal prosecutor said in a statement that there was enough evidence to suggest Monday's incident was "an attempted explosives' attack by a terrorist organization with a radical Islamist bent".

The German parliament approved by a wide majority on Friday the deployment of Patriot missiles to help Turkey defend its border against conflict-riven Syria as part of a NATO mission.

The vote clears the way for Germany to deploy the missiles to southern Turkey along with up to 400 German soldiers after NATO member state Turkey asked the alliance for help.

Europe's top rights court Thursday ordered Macedonia to pay 60,000 euros ($78,000) in damages to a Lebanese-born German who claims the CIA abducted him there in 2003 and flew him to Afghanistan to be tortured.

Khaled el-Masri, 48, says he was abducted by CIA operatives under the so-called extraordinary rendition program while on holiday in Macedonia and then taken to a secret Afghan prison for brutal interrogation.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel Thursday praised a new EU accord to create a supervisor to oversee banks across the eurozone and urged the release of urgently needed funds for Greece.

Addressing lawmakers in the Bundestag lower house of parliament, she said the deal clinched earlier in Brussels just hours before an EU summit was of inestimable value and had met German concerns.

The Friends of Syria nations opposed to President Bashar Assad meet in Morocco on Wednesday to look afresh at how to resolve the deepening crisis and support the new opposition group after it won official U.S. backing.

The meeting in Marrakesh coincides with a rapidly deteriorating refugee situation as winter sets in, and gains in the battlefield by a key rebel group suspected of links to al-Qaida.

Germany on Monday expelled four employees of the Syrian embassy in Berlin, the foreign minister said, as part of moves to sharply curb ties to the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

"We are sending a clear message with the expulsion of four Syrian embassy staff that we are reducing relations with the Assad regime to an absolute minimum," Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said in a statement.