Boris Johnson has reopened the rift with Paris over the AUKUS defence and security deal, urging the French to “prenez un grip about this and donnez-moi un break”, after he and Joe Biden discussed deepening the pact, reports The Guardian.
The prime minister was speaking in Washington, where he attended a dinner on Tuesday evening with the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, after meeting the US president at the White House.
Johnson and Biden talked about extending their cooperation through the pact to cover further issues including safeguarding human rights and promoting free markets – and ruled out inviting more countries to join.
Johnson said: “What I found on Capitol Hill was that they want to populate the agenda with all sorts of other things which matter.” He cited the need for a western rival to telecom giant Huawei, which the UK government recently decided to remove from some parts of the country’s critical infrastructure because of security concerns.
“What we need is a western technology on which we can all rely,” he said.
He added that he and Biden had been surprised at the strength of the reaction from Paris regarding Aukus – and claimed to be ready to smooth things over. “I think everybody has been a bit taken aback by the strength of the French reaction and we all want to reach out,” he said, adding: “We love the French.”
The US and UK governments believed Australia had signalled the development to France in advance, but the message appeared to have been missed in Paris. Morrison is understood to have reassured the UK prime minister at their dinner in Washington that he had carried the message to Paris as promised.
Asked whether he understood why the French were annoyed, he said: “It’s just one of those things – there are no easy ways of having these conversations – it’s a very human thing to delay until the last possible moment.”
Some Downing Street officials believe the French government has kept the public spat running so vocally in an attempt to ensure they receive the maximum compensation for the cancellation of the submarine contract.