Hollande warns of total war if Mid-East conflict not solved

Europe must live up to the challenge of an upheaval that has forced hundreds of thousands of refugees to flee Syria, where everyone including Iran, Russia and the West must seek a political solution, French President Francois Hollande said on Wednesday.

Speaking alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, eastern France, Hollande said the risk of failure was "total war" and that Europe, if slow to grasp the scale of the refugee exodus, had now made a start.

As for Syria, Hollande reiterated the Paris line that any solution for Syria had to be based on an alternative to President Bashar al-Assad.

"If we let the recent religious confrontations between Shiites and Sunnites get worse then don't think that we won't be affected. It will be a total war, a war that will also affect our territories and we must act."