Rebuilding trust with Biden, Macron says ‘We must look to the future’

ROME (Reuters) – President Emmanuel Macron said his gathering with President Joe Biden on Friday would let France and the United States rebuilt to rebuild spot pursuing a rift implicit an Indo-Pacific information pact, and that it was cardinal to look to the future.

The 2 leaders shared a lukewarm handshake for the cameras after Biden kept Macron waiting for much than 1 and a fractional hours, earlier sitting down to talks implicit climate, counter-terrorism successful West Africa and European defence.

“What truly matters present is what we bash unneurotic successful the coming weeks, successful the coming months,” Macron said successful opening remarks astatine France’s embassy to the Vatican.

“It’s an important gathering due to the fact that aft the AUKUS affair, we person embarked connected a veritable associated project,” Macron said, referring to the acronym for the information pact Washington signed with Britain and Australia.

Macron and his authorities were near infuriated by the woody which resulted successful Canberra scrapping a mega-defence woody for French submarines.

At the time, Macron‘s authorities said it had been ‘stabbed successful the back’ by its adjacent allies, upset by the mode successful which the matter undermined France and Europe’s relation connected the planetary stage.

Macron said determination had since been “indispensable clarification arsenic to what constitutes European sovereignty and European defence and what they tin bring to planetary security.”

(Reporting by Michel Rose successful Rome; Editing by GV De Clercq and Jonathan Oatis)