Blinken seeks to make up with France post submarine-deal spat

Bloomberg

Secretary of State Antony Blinken met French President Emmanuel Macron and other top French officials in Paris on Tuesday as the US looks to move past a spat over a defense agreement with Australia and the United Kingdom.
Blinken and Macron met for 30 to 40 minutes to discuss deeper cooperation in the Indo-Pacific and the Sahel region of Africa, according to a senior State Department official who spoke with reporters on condition of anonymity. They were also laying the groundwork for a meeting between President Joe Biden and Macron that’s
expected later this month, the official said.
The meetings with Macron, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and National Security Advisor Emmanuel Bonne are part of the administration’s effort to heal a rift over the defense pact, known as Aukus, that involved Australia scrapping a multibillion-dollar submarine contract with France. The deal led Macron to recall the country’s ambassador to Washington for the first time.
Blinken and top French officials didn’t discuss the defense deal or its fallout, but instead focused on using the disagreement as an opportunity to discuss common objectives, the official said. The meetings were cordial and amicable, the official said. One area of discussion was where the US and France can work together on counter-terrorism, and the two sides will meet again in the coming weeks to discuss details.
The original reason for Blinken’s two-day trip to Paris was for him to attend a meeting of the Organisation for Cooperation and Development in Europe, but the visit, which was planned months ago, has been overshadowed by the continued fallout from the submarine deal and France’s lingering sense of betrayal by the Biden administration.
In the weeks since, US president Joe Biden and his team have sought to make up for what they’ve acknowledged were missteps around the announcement of the deal.
Last week, Assistant Secretary of State Karen Donfried told reporters that the September 15 agreement “would have benefited from better and more open consultation among allies.”
In a sign of France’s lingering dissatisfaction, Blinken’s meeting with Macron wasn’t on his official schedule, indicating that the French leader didn’t commit to it until the last minute.