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Meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday, President Joe Biden said America was “clumsy” in its orchestration of a secret U.S.-British submarine deal with Australia, an arrangement that left France in the lurch and rattled Europe’s faith in American loyalty.
Biden and Macron greeted each other with handshakes and shoulder-grabs before their first face-to-face meeting since the deal was publicly announced in September, marking the latest American effort to try to smooth hurt French sensibilities. Biden didn’t formally apologize to Macron, but conceded the U.S. should not have caught its oldest ally by surprise.
“I think, what happened was to use an English phrase, what we did was clumsy,” Biden said, adding the submarine deal “was not done with a lot of grace.”
“I was under the impression that France had been informed long before,” he added.
The U.S.-led submarine contract supplanted a prior French deal to supply Australia with its own submarines. The U.S. argued that the move, which will arm the Pacific ally with higher-quality nuclear-powered boats, will better enable Australia to contain Chinese encroachment in the region.
Macron was expecting Biden to make a new “commitment” to supporting French anti-terrorist operations in the Sahel region of Africa, according to a top French official. France has been seeking greater intelligence and military cooperation from the U.S. in the Sahel.
Macron said the two allies would develop “stronger cooperation” to prevent a similar misunderstanding from happening…
Source : france24
