Submarine row: France cancels meetings with UK and Australian officials, seeks EU support

Australia and Britain insisted Monday that the diplomatic crisis wouldn't affect their longer-term relations with France, which is seething over a surprise, strategic submarine deal involving the US, Australia and Britain that sank a rival French submarine contract.

France recalled its ambassadors to the US and Australia for the first time because of the deal, and its anger is showing few signs of subsiding.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, in New York to represent France at the U.N. General Assembly, is expected to give a news conference Monday to address the situation. He's also meeting with foreign ministers from the other 26 European Union nations in New York, where he will discuss the consequences of the submarine deal and France's vision for a more strategically independent Europe.

“It’s not just a Franco-Australian affair, but a rupture of trust in alliances,” Le Drian was quoted as saying in the French newspaper Ouest-France. “It calls for serious reflection about the very concept of what we do with alliances.”

Le Drian said he canceled a meeting with his Australian counterpart in New York “for obvious reasons." They had been scheduled to meet with the Indian foreign minister, but instead it will be a France-India meeting alone.

Le Drian said he has no meeting scheduled with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken while he's at the U.N., but might “pass him in the hallways."

SOURCE: AFP