Tiff over AUKUS: France pulls out of trilateral ministerial talks with India, Australia

Paris’s tiff with Washington DC, Canberra and London over the AUKUS has now hit India’s plan to elevate the level of a trilateral coalition it launched with France and Australia for strategic convergence in the Indo-Pacific region.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has withdrawn from a proposed trilateral meeting, which he and his Indian and Australian counterparts, S Jaishankar and Marise Payne, were scheduled to hold in New York on Wednesday.

The meeting was cancelled, however, Jaishankar has already held separate bilateral meetings with both Le Drian and Payne.

The trilateral meeting was cancelled after Paris conveyed to New Delhi that French Foreign Minister would not hold any engagement with his counterpart from Australia.

France is upset over the recent move by Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States to launch a new trilateral security alliance, AUKUS, to counter hegemonic and expansionist aspirations of China in the Indo-Pacific region.

The AUKUS is intended to focus on cooperation on development of joint military capabilities and defence technology sharing. It has been launched with the professed objective of creating a framework for the US and UK to support Australia in acquiring a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines. The launch of the AUKUS triggered sharp reaction from Macron’s Government in Paris, as it scuttled a $37 billion deal inked in 2016 for France to provide Australia 12 conventional submarines.

Paris already recalled its envoys from Canberra and Washington D.C.

The senior diplomats of India, Australia and France in September 2020 had launched a new trilateral dialogue, signalling strategic convergence among the three nations in Indo-Pacific region amid growing belligerence of China. It had been elevated to the level of the Foreign Ministers during a meeting in London on May 4 this year. Tacitly sending out a message to China, they had agreed to work together with a range of partners to promote the rules-based maritime order based on respect for sovereignty and international law.

The Foreign Ministers of the three nations had also agreed to elevate the trilateral coalition further and take it to the level of the leaders.

The diplomats of the three nations were in touch over the past few months to discuss possibility of a meeting among Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and French President Emmanuel Macron.

But Paris’s tiff with Canberra over the AUKUS however put the plan in jeopardy.

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