France criticizes US-led Indo-Pacific alliance
Date
11/19/2022 5:44:29 AM
(MENAFN) On Friday, French President Emmanuel macron slammed the Australia, United Kingdom, and United States (AUKUS) trilateral security alliance, warning Australia that supplying the country with nuclear submarines would be unsustainable.
On the margins of the APEC CEO Summit in Bangkok, Thailand on Thursday, Macron claimed that Australia had engaged into "nuclear conflict" with China after canceling its contract with France to build a dozen diesel-powered submarines in favor of US or UK-built nuclear submarines.
Macron said that by canceling its submarine deal with France, Australia has started a "nuclear confrontation" with China.
As per Macron, Australia’s initial contract with France was “not confrontational to China because they are not nuclear-powered submarines.” “But the choice made by [former] Prime Minister [Scott] Morrison was the opposite, re-entering into nuclear confrontation,” he stated.
The French president told Bloomberg on Friday that the AUKUS agreement was "a big signal of distress for us," claiming that it would make Canberra's military supply chains unreliable and that AUKUS "will not deliver" on its promises.
The French president indicated that Paris could still consider building submarines for Australia, despite Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's stated intention to stay in the AUKUS deal. “We are proceeding with the AUKUS arrangements, there’s nothing ambiguous about it.”
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