Relations would not be so cold, despite the differences in point of view.
“There is no Franco-German clash, we agree on 80% of the subjects,” said the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Stéphane Séjourné, in an interview with Le Monde published this Saturday.
The most visible bones of contention currently concern the form of aid to be given to Ukraine in the face of the Russian steamroller, at a time when a vital envelope of more than 60 billion dollars remains blocked in the United States.
During the support conference for kyiv organized by Paris on Monday, the French head of state appeared to implicitly attack countries like Germany, which has long hesitated to deliver certain heavy weapons to kyiv.
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“I spoke with my German counterpart, Annalena Baerbock, we will see each other next Tuesday in Paris.
There is a desire to talk to each other,” said the head of French diplomacy.
“There is no drama there since we have the same objective of supporting Ukraine,” he also underlined.
Furthermore, the French minister rejected the idea that the discussions on the military presence in Ukraine had electoral aims, in the run-up to the European elections in June.
“The question is not electoral, it is existential.
Ukraine is at the center of electoral debates because there are, in fact, differences of position on the subject.
I would prefer that this was not the case and that there was a broad consensus beyond partisan divisions,” he explained, also calling for divisions within France to be avoided.
“I invite everyone to realize that what is happening in Ukraine concerns us all,” insisted the minister.
Israelis “accountable” for the situation in Gaza
In the national daily, Stéphane Séjourné also expressed France's position on the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
“The responsibilities for blocking aid are clearly Israeli,” he lambasted, noting that the catastrophic humanitarian situation “creates indefensible and unjustifiable situations for which the Israelis are accountable.”
France has redoubled its efforts with the Israeli authorities to increase the number of crossing points and humanitarian trucks.
But they “were not satisfied” and “the famine adds to the horror,” lamented the head of French diplomacy, who visited the region a month ago.
On Thursday, a distribution of humanitarian aid turned into tragedy in Gaza City: Israeli fire on the crowd and a stampede left 115 dead, according to the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.
Furthermore, for him, the situation in Rafah is “a dead end.
In the far south of the territory, nearly a million and a half Palestinians are massed, according to the UN, trapped against the closed border with Egypt, while the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, announced a ground offensive on the city shortly, to defeat, according to him, the Islamist movement in its “last bastion”.
It would be “a new humanitarian disaster;
we are doing everything to avoid it,” once again assured Stéphane Séjourné, recalling that France has been urging a lasting ceasefire for months.