France, UK to Convene Emergency Hormuz Conference

(MENAFN) France and the United Kingdom will jointly convene an emergency conference in Paris on Friday to address the mounting crisis over freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, the French presidency announced Tuesday.

Elysée Palace confirmed that President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will co-chair the gathering, according to a broadcaster.

The summit will unite what the French presidency described as "non-belligerent countries willing to contribute" to "a multinational and purely defensive mission aimed at restoring freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz when security conditions allow."

The conference comes against a backdrop of rapidly escalating tensions. Washington and Tehran held high-stakes talks in the Pakistani capital over the weekend — the most consequential direct engagement between the two powers since diplomatic ties were severed in 1979 — as part of broader efforts to halt the US-Israeli offensive on Iran, which has killed more than 3,300 people since Feb. 28. A fragile two-week ceasefire, mediated and formally announced by Pakistan on April 8, was brokered only last week.

Those weekend negotiations, however, yielded no breakthrough. Shortly after, US President Donald Trump announced a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which took effect at 1400 GMT Monday — dramatically raising the stakes ahead of Friday's Paris summit.

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