Joe Biden acknowledged on Friday that the US treatment of France had been “clumsy” in its handling of the launch of a new security pact with the UK and Australia last month that had excluded and enraged Paris.
“I think what happened was to use an English phrase . . . clumsy,” the US president told reporters while meeting with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron at the French embassy to the Holy See in Rome on Friday. He added: “It was not done with a lot of grace.”
The US has been attempting to dampen French fury after Washington announced a security pact last month with the UK and Australia, which resulted in the scuppering of a long-planned multibillion-dollar order for French submarines and left French officials in the dark.