White House Climate envoy and special aide John Kerry told a French television station on Tuesday that President Joe Biden had “literally not been aware” of the fallout between the United States and France in late September.
France withdrew their ambassadors from the U.S. and Australia over the “duplicity, disdain, and lies” during the sudden cancelation of France’s contract to sell submarines to Australia in favor of a deal with the United States.
Biden was literally unaware, Kerry said.
“President Biden asked me about it and I told him and expressed, uh…” Kerry told a French interviewer.
“You told Joe Biden that it was not the right thing?” the interviewer responded.
“He asked me — he said, ‘What’s the situation?’ And I explained exactly, uh… He had not been aware of that. He literally had not been aware of what had transpired,” Kerry admitted in a recent interview.
“I don’t want to go into the details of it, but suffice it to say that the president — my president is very committed to strengthening the relationship and making sure that this is a small event of the past and moving on to the much more important future,” Kerry said.
“We have a relationship with France that is so much bigger than this moment of what happened with respect to a lack of communication,” he said.
“Our commitment… to our ability to work together is much, much stronger than any of these differences over the last few days,” Kerry continued.
“President Biden looks forward to meeting with President Macron and I’m absolutely confident that the bigger issues we have to work on, about nuclear weapons, about cyber warfare, about climate.”
“We have a lot of work to do and we can’t get lost in a momentary event that I think we will get past very quickly.”
On Thursday, France announced they were returning their ambassador to Austrialia.
“We welcome back the French Ambassador to Canberra, and hopefully we can move beyond our recent disappointments,” Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, deputy leader of the ruling conservative Liberal Party, told an Australian news station.
Under an alliance that includes Britain, Australia will acquire a fleet of eight nuclear-powered submarines built with U.S. technology. The country had previously signed a $66 billion dollar contract with the majority French state-owned Naval Group to buy 12 conventional diesel-electric submarines.
France announced it would return its ambassador to the United States on Sep. 22nd.
Critics pounced on Biden’s apparent absence from the major U.S. foreign policy position.
“Remember, questioning the 78-year-old president’s ability to remember what he’s been told in briefings, or handle the pressures of the job, is absolutely unacceptable, or at least that is what I keep getting told,” Jim Geraghty of the National Review wrote on social media.
.@ClimateEnvoy John Kerry says @POTUS isn't consulted on reactions of key US Allies. This could explain disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal & Biden Admin selling out Eastern European allies in NATO & Ukraine while waiving sanctions on Nord Stream 2 pipeline. https://t.co/RNaa2vsaJg
— Senator Bill Hagerty (@SenatorHagerty) October 5, 2021
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The Associated Press contributed to this article