Paris: France on Saturday accused Australia and the United States lying in the crisis on the security pact that saw Canberra Memo contract to buy a French submarine for American vessels.
“There has been a lie, duplifical, a great violation of trust and humiliation,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told France 2 television.
“It won’t be done.” “Serious crisis” is underway between allies, he added.
Le Drian spoke a day after Paris, on the orders of President Emmanuel Macron, given his ambassador to Canberra and Washington, an unprecedented action that revealed the level of anger in France for the outbreak of the contract.
He described the withdrawal of ambassador as a “very symbolic” action intended “to show how unhappy we are and that there is a serious crisis between us and to reevaluate our position to defend our interests.” “The fact that for the first time in the history of relations between the United States and France we remember our ambassador to consultation is a serious political action, which shows the magnitude of the crisis among our countries,” he said.
He also took out the stinging response to the question of why France had not remembered its ambassador to England, when London was also part of a security pact that caused a rupture of a contract.
“We have remembered our ambassador to (Canberra and Washington) to reevaluate the situation.
With English is not necessary.
We know their opportunism is constant.
So there is no need to bring our ambassador to explain,” he said.
The role of London in the pact, he added: “England in all this is rather like the third wheel.” NATO must take into account what happens when it is branding strategies at the peak in Madrid next year, he added.
France will be a priority now to develop the EU security strategy when taking a block presidency in early 2022, he said.