The American and French foreign ministers, Antony Blinken and Jean-Yves Le Drian, will be able to
“exchange their points of view”
Wednesday, September 22 during a meeting with other powers at the UN, even if no face-to-face -Head is not yet programmed on the crisis between the two allied countries.
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The two ministers will meet in the evening in New York for a traditional meeting with their counterparts from other permanent members of the Security Council and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, an American diplomat said on Tuesday.
"They will certainly be in the same room"
(in this case the Security Council Chamber) and
"will exchange views on a number of things,"
she told reporters.
She did not mention a bilateral meeting at this stage on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly which is being held this week in New York, without however excluding it definitively.
Meeting canceled at the request of France
Monday, Jean-Yves Le Drian had only said that he would meet the American Secretary of State
"in the corridors"
of the UN. However, another meeting initially scheduled for Wednesday, which was to bring together Antony Blinken and Jean-Yves Le Drian but also their British and German counterparts, Liz Truss and Heiko Maas, has been canceled. The US official raised agenda issues, but several diplomatic sources told AFP that the cancellation had been requested by Paris.
France has recovered greatly since the announcement made in mid-September by Joe Biden of a new strategic alliance with Australia and the United Kingdom, which is torpedoing a mega-contract for French submarines in Canberra.
The President of the United States has asked for several days to speak on the phone with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, who said without further clarification that this interview would take place soon.
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On Wednesday, instead of the canceled four-way meeting, Antony Blinken will have a bilateral meeting with the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell. The latter had shown on Monday the
"solidarity"
of the countries of the European Union towards Paris at the end of a ministerial meeting of the 27 member countries of the EU held on the sidelines of the General Assembly of the UN.