US vice president in Paris to talk diplomacy, peace

US Vice President Kamala Harris landed in France early Tuesday at the start of a busy week that will test her diplomatic skills in the City of Light.

Harris will spend the next four days in Paris speaking with President Emmanuel Macron and other officials on several issues, primarily the rift over the controversial AUKUS deal struck between the US, Britain and Australia in September, which she will seek to continue to repair, according to French news outlet France24.

AUKUS is a new alliance between the three countries in which Australia will purchase eight state-of-the-art nuclear powered submarines from the US or UK, thus discarding its Future Submarine Program (FSP) with France for diesel-electric vessels. The deal was announced to the shock of the French government, which was not at all informed and which days later recalled France’s ambassadors to Washington and Canberra.

At the G20 summit in Rome at the end of last month, President Macron met with US President Joe Biden to smooth over the situation. During their talks, Biden had called the move made by the US “clumsy.” The new deal had cost France an estimated €56 billion ($64.9 billion) in lost revenue.

Harris understands how deep the ties are that bind the US and France and the importance of mending the relationship between the very old allies. She will be received by the French president at the Elysee Palace to further discuss the AUKUS pact and “European security, the Indo-Pacific and health at the global level,” according to a statement issued by the White House.

On Thursday, the vice president will attend the Paris Peace Forum, where she will deliver remarks focused mostly on COVID-19 to an audience of heads of state, gatekeepers to industry and religious and spiritual leaders. Macron is the organizer of the forum.

Thursday also marks Veterans Day in the US. Harris plans to participate in ceremonies commemorating the 1918 armistice that ended World War I.

The vice president then rounds out her week by taking part in the multilateral Paris Conference on Libya on Friday.