The French Ambassador in Australia, Jean-Pierre Thebault, said on Monday that France felt "deceived" by Australia after the recent suspension of a multimillionaire contract for the construction of 12 conventional submarines by the company Gala Naval Group.
"We discovered through the press that the most important person in this Australian government intentionally hid us (the suspension of the contract) until the last minute, that is not an Australia's own attitude towards France. Maybe we are not friends," he said. Thebault in an interview with ABC television from Paris.
The cancellation of the contract with the French company Naval Group, valued at about 65,151 million dollars or 55,611 million euros, was known after the announcement last week from a Defense Agreement between the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, which includes development of nuclear submarines in the oceanic country.
Thebault is in the French capital after the Government called on consultations to its ambassadors in Camberra and Washington to express their discontent by the way Australia and the US have set up the agreement behind them.
"This has been plotted for 18 months. While we were committed to making the best program (for the manufacture of submarines), in which France committed its best-saved military secrets, there was a completely different project that we discovered, thanks to the press, an hour Before the announcement. You can imagine our anger, we feel deceived, "he added.
In a vehement tone, Thebault protested the fact that the French Government has been the last to learn about the Australian Agreement with the US and United Kingdom and stressed that "it is a matter of principles, dignity and mutual respect in the relationship between state".
The French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Yves Le Drian, accused Australia and the US of "lying, duplicity, of a great rupture of trust and contempt."
For his part Australia has affirmed that he does not need to demonstrate his affection for France because he already did it with the sacrifice of Australian soldiers during the first and World War II.
Some countries in the IndoPacific region have shown their discomfort by the signing of the ambitious US Defense Agreement, Australia and the United Kingdom, which will provide the fleet of the oceanic country of nuclear propulsion submarines. "Australia does not need to demonstrate its affinity and its affection and its determined will to ensure France's freedom and equality," said Australian Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, currently prime minister as Scott Morrison visits Washington.
"We have tens of thousands of Australians who died in French soil or protecting French soil from the surrounding countries, both in the first and in World War II," he said.
North Korea on Monday accused the signatories, and mainly to Washington, to "alter the strategic balance in the Asia-Pacific region" and trigger a nuclear armament race with a covenant to "extremely undesirable and dangerous".
For its part, Malaysia and Indonesia were regretted this Sunday that the agreement will cause other powers to act more aggressively in the region, especially in the Southern Chinese Sea.
Date Of Update: 21 September 2021, 01:20
