British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Sunday brushed aside the diplomatic rift with Paris over a new security pact with Australia and the US, insisting that his country’s ‘love of France is ineradicable’.
Speaking to journalists as he flew to New York on Sunday, Johnson maintained that Britain and France have a ‘very friendly relationship’, which he described as being of ‘huge importance’.
Africa Today News, New York gathered that the controversial security agreement, and Australia’s related decision to tear up a multibillion-dollar deal for French submarines in favour of American nuclear-powered vessels, has sparked outrage in Paris, with President Emmanuel Macron recalling France’s ambassadors to Canberra and Washington in an unprecedented move.
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French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said over the weekend that Britain was a “third wheel” in the affair, and accused London of “constant opportunism”.
France has cancelled a meeting set for this week between its Defence Minister Florence Parly and her British counterpart Ben Wallace, a source at her ministry told AFP Sunday.
However, on the plane Johnson downplayed France’s concerns.
He stressed that the pact, dubbed AUKUS, was “not in any way meant to be zero-sum, it’s not meant to be exclusionary’.
‘It’s not something that anybody needs to worry about and particularly not our French friends,’ he said.
AFRICA TODAY NEWS, NEW YORK