PARIS (Al-Jazeera) - France’s ambassador to Australia has accused Canberra of acting with deceit when it abruptly cancelled a multibillion-dollar deal with Paris to build a fleet of conventional submarines.
Jean-Pierre Thebault said on Wednesday that Australia’s decision in September to scrap the agreement with France’s Naval Group – after it unveiled a new trilateral security pact with the United States and the United Kingdom – was a “stab in the back”.
Under the terms of its new alliance with Washington and London, dubbed AUKUS, Australia has opted to acquire at least eight nuclear-powered submarines with US and British technology instead of buying French-made vessels.
“The deceit was intentional,” Thebault told reporters at an address to Australia’s National Press Club in Canberra, in his first remarks since he and France’s envoy to the United States were recalled over the row.
“And because there was far more at stake than providing submarines, because it was a common agreement on sovereignty, sealed with the transmission of highly classified data, the way it was handled was a stab in the back,” he said.
Thebault, who returned to the capital last month, said the moves by Australia were not “things which are done between partners – even less between friends”.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison declined to refute Thebault’s comments.
“Claims were made and claims were refuted, what is needed now is for us to move on,” Morrison told reporters in the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday, where he stopped off en route to Australia after attending the United Nations climate conference in Glasgow.