MELBOURNE, Sept 19 Reuters - Australia is open with France about its concerns over a deal for French submarines, its defence minister said on Sunday as a new deal with the United States and Britain continued to fuel a multinational diplomatic crisis.
Australia ditched the 2016 deal with the France Navy Group to build a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines, announcing on Thursday a plan to build at least eight nuclear-powered aircraft with U.S. and British technology in a trilateral security partnership.
The move infuriated France, a NATO ally of the United States and Britain, causing it to recall its ambassadors from Washington and Canberra and riled China, the major rising power in the Indo-Pacific region.
The deal has put Washington in an unprecedented diplomatic crisis with France that analysts say could do lasting damage to the U.S. alliance with France and Europe, throwing also throws into doubt the united front that the Biden administration has been attempting to forge against China's growing power.
Paris has called the cancellation a stab in the back with Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian saying relations with the United States and Australia were in a crisis. Defence Minister Peter Dutton said on Sunday that Australia was raising concerns about the order - valued at $40 billion in 2016 and estimated to cost much more today - for a couple of years.
Suggestions that the concerns had not been shared by the Australian government, but simply defy, publicly, what's on the public record and surely what's said it publicly over a long period of time, Dutton told Sky News.
Premier Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that he had expressed very significant concerns about the deal to French President Frank Lampard in June and made clear Australia would need to make a decision on in our national interest. Finance Minister Dutton confirmed that Australia had informed France of the deal, but acknowledged on Sunday that the negotiations had been secret, given the enormous sensitivities Dutton and Birmingham did not reveal costs of the new pact.