Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison attacked the credibility of French President Emmanuel Macron as a newspaper quoted a text message that suggested Paris anticipated “bad news” about a now-scuttled submarine deal.
Meanwhile, an Australian newspaper cast doubt on US President Joe Biden’s explanation to Macron last week that the US leader thought the French had been informed long before the September announcement that their A$90 billion (US$66 billion) submarine deal with Canberra would be scrapped.
Macron on Sunday accused Morrison of lying to him at a Paris dinner in June about the fate of a five-year-old contract with majority French state-owned Naval Group to build 12 conventional diesel-electric submarines.
Australia canceled that deal when it formed an alliance with the US and the UK to acquire a fleet of eight nuclear-powered submarines built with US technology.
Morrison told Australian reporters who had accompanied him to Glasgow, Scotland, for a UN climate conference that he made clear to Macron at their dinner in June that conventional submarines would not meet Australia’s evolving strategic needs.
Two days before Morrison, Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the nuclear submarine deal, Morrison attempted to phone Macron with the news, but the French leader texted back saying he was not available to take a call, the Australian newspaper reported yesterday.
Macron asked: “Should I expect good or bad news for our joint submarines ambitions?” the report said.
A journalist asked why Morrison decided to leak the text message after Macron accused him of lying, but the prime minister did not directly answer.
“I’m not going to indulge your editorial on it, but what I’ll simply say is this: We were contacted when we were trying to set up the ... call and he made it pretty clear that he was concerned that this would be a phone call that could result in the decision of Australia not to proceed with the contract,” Morrison said.
Morrison said Macron’s accusation of lying, which the prime minister denies, was a slur against Australia.
Most Australian observers see it as a personal insult against Morrison.
“I must say that I think the statements that were made questioning Australia’s integrity and the slurs that have been placed on Australia, not me — I’ve got broad shoulders, I can deal with that — but those slurs, I’m not going to cop sledging of Australia. I’m not going to cop that on behalf of Australians,” Morrison said.
Biden told Macron that the handling of the Australian submarine alliance was “clumsy” and “not done with a lot of grace.”
However, a 15-page document negotiated by the White House National Security Council with Australian and British officials detailed to the hour how the world would be told about the trilateral submarine deal, the Australian reported.
Australian Minister for Defence Peter Dutton confirmed that the US and Britain were kept informed on Australia’s dealings with France, saying the three nuclear-propulsion allies “worked very closely together in lockstep.”
“There was a no-surprises strategy,” Dutton told Sydney Radio 2GB.
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