Joe Biden called France an “extremely, extremely valuable partner…”.
Rome:
US President Joe Biden told his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron on Friday that his country was “clumsy” in securing a submarine deal with Australia behind France’s back.
“We have no better ally than France,” Biden said in his first meeting with Macron since the controversy last month.
“What happened, to use the English phrase, what we did was clumsy, it was not done with much grace,” Biden told reporters after meeting in Rome ahead of the weekend G20 summit.
“I was under the impression that France was informed long ago, that the (French) deal was not going through,” he said.
Biden called France an “extremely, extremely valued partner … and a force in its own right” with “similar values” to the United States.
A diplomatic dispute erupted last month after Australia withdrew from a multi-billion dollar submarines deal with France in favor of an alternative one with the United States and Britain.
An enraged French government called the cancellation of the secret talks “a stab in the back”, and Macron recalled his ambassadors from Washington and Canberra.
Australia announced the subpoena as it joined a new alliance with Britain and the United States, dubbed AUKUS, one of a series of initiatives by Biden that seeks to reconcile China to the United States. Sees as paramount concern.
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