AUKUS Sub Spat: France Announces Plans to Resume Cooperation With US Ahead of Biden-Macron Meeting

France's military industry was gypped out of a multi-billion dollar diesel-electric submarine deal with Australia after Canberra signed a new security partnership with the United States and Britain. Under the pact, known as AUKUS, Australia will get sub nuclear reactor technology from the US and the UK, and build the boats at its own shipyards.

The French cabinet has announced that Paris will resume cooperation with Washington in the wake of the AUKUS scandal, notwithstanding lingering resentments, citing the two nations' role in "resolving" important global problems.

"It is necessary to relaunch bilateral cooperation with the Americans, as both us and them are involved in resolving issues that are of great importance for the planet, such as climate and the fight against terrorism in the Sahel," cabinet spokesman Gabriel Attal told BFM TV on Friday.

Attal stressed that the two countries would need to restore trust which had been undermined by the AUKUS sub spat, and admitted that "the path" toward doing so "will be long and demanding."

Relations between France on one side and the US, the UK and Australia on the other plummeted to lows unseen in decades in mid-September after the latter three countries announced the creation of a new trilateral security pact, which prompted the Australian government to jettison a $65 billion French-Australian deisel-electric submarine deal signed earlier. In the French subs' place, Australia will receive US and British nuclear reactor technology, and build the subs at its own shipyards. The pact also includes potential new basing rights, and other cooperation in areas including defence, AI, cybersecurity and quantum technologies.

The agreement, negotiated in complete secrecy from the three countries' NATO and other Western partners, sparked outrage from the French, who briefly yanked their ambassador in Washington and accused Australia "lying" about its plans to purchase French subs. Amid the scandal, some French opposition politicians have urged France to go further and consider withdrawing from NATO altogether over the perceived "stab in the back."

French President Emmanuel Macron is set to meet his US coutnerpart Joe Biden on Friday in Rome at the G20 summit for their first face-to-face encounter since the AUKUS-related diplomatic flap.

Earlier Friday, Australian Defence Minister Peter Dutton suggested that Paris's ongoing "frustration" over the AUKUS deal was related to France's upcoming presidential elections, and said Canberra expects ties with the European nation to normalize "through the next year" after the vote.

Russia, China, North Korea and other nations in the Asia Pacific region have expressed concerns about AUKUS' implications for regional security. Last week, Russian foreign ministry ambassador at large Grigory Mashkov told Sputnik that the agreement's provisions on the use of Australian territory for the deployment of military infrastructure of nuclear power creates "potential risks of destabilizing the situation in the field of international and regional security." Other nations, he warned, will "inevitably" respond to the creation of a new alliance.