The US Secretary of State was received by the President of the Republic and Jean-Yves Le Drian Tuesday, in a “serious” atmosphere, according to a senior official of the United States.
Le Monde with AFP
After the submarine crisis that broke out mid-September, the reunion between Paris and Washington remained sober. Emmanuel Macron received, Tuesday, October 5, in Paris, the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a studious but without effusions, to prepare the “concrete decisions” that the French President and Joe Biden will announce late October to seal reconciliation.
The “long-to-head”, which was initially not the agenda, must “help restore the trust between France and the United States,” said the Elysee. The two allied countries “continue their work of coordination on issues of common interest, whether it is EU-NATO cooperation, Sahel or Indo-Pacific space”.
According to a senior American official, who greeted a “positive” and “productive” interview, there is an “agreement [around the idea that] we have an opportunity now [to] deepen and strengthen the “Franco-American coordination”. “But a lot of difficult work remains to be done to identify concrete decisions” that will be submitted to the two presidents for their planned meeting at the end of October in Europe, he explained.
“consultation process in-depth “
The cold shot broke out on September 15, when the President of the United States announced a new alliance with Australia and the United Kingdom in the Indo-Pacific region, as part of its high international priority: counter China. This partnership baptized Aukus has raised a rare anger of France because he torpedo a megacontrrate of sale of French submarines passed with the Australians.
It took a phone call between Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron, after a week of strong tensions, to start a certain appeasement. The tenant of the White House acknowledged that the United States could better communicate with their long-standing ally. And both heads of state launched a “in-depth consultation process”.
According to the American official already quoted, the atmosphere Tuesday was “serious”, and the conversations did not focus on French recriminations about Aukus, as in a previous interview between Antony Blinken and his Homologous Jean-Yves Le Drian at the end of September in New York.
“This crisis involves the interests of all Europeans”
The Parisian reunion has nevertheless been marked by a less warm welcome than in the past. Jean-Yves The Drian has certainly received his counterpart at the head at the Orsay dock before the formal meeting, but he did not show at least with him. No common press conference has been scheduled.
In June, the French minister had warmly launched “welcome to you” to Antony Blinken, perfect Francophone who lived in Paris all his adolescence and considers France as his “second homeland”. Since mid-September, change of tone: Jean-Yves Le Drian has denounced a “shot in the back” worthy of the datummy method of the trump era.
To show that France is not isolated, the minister had trade on Monday with his German, Spanish, Polish counterparts and with the head of the European diplomacy Josep Borrell, and had to talk Tuesday with his Italian counterparts and Dutch. “This crisis involves the interests of all Europeans regarding the functioning of our alliances and the commitment of Europeans in the Indo-Pacific”, insists a source of French diplomacy.
A European source recently hoped that the crisis is revealed to be wrong with a bad for a good, allowing a “clarification” between the two banks of the Atlantic about the ambitions of a European defense NATO complementary, a project pushed in particular by Emmanuel Macron. The latter also wants France’s “Indo-Pacific Power” status to be recognized in a framework that remains to be defined.