(AFP) – French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday he had “very constructive” talks with his US counterpart Donald Trump on the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine. Macron spoke with Trump after arriving in New York ahead of the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations.
“We had a very good discussion. It was very constructive,” he told reporters after the meeting. Macron said there was a “willingness to reopen (the Strait of) Hormuz,” a vital shipping route for the world’s oil and gas, which has been blockaded by Iran during the war in the Middle East. “Several solutions were discussed… which would make it possible, without a comprehensive deal, to find ways and means of allowing more container ships and tankers to go through,” Macron said without giving additional details.
“The other issue we talked about was the situation in the Red Sea… It’s important for global prices,” he said. The Red Sea has become a key oil shipping route with the Strait of Hormuz blocked, but the takeover of a key strait by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis has complicated shipping operations there.
On Russia and Ukraine, Macron said he pressed Trump on the issue of supplying defensive weapons systems to Kyiv. Macron and Trump discussed “the need to help our Ukrainian friends faster and more strongly in terms of (missile) interceptors, because that is… a defensive measure,” the French leader said. Macron said in a post on X that they also discussed “the prospect of an energy truce and a moratorium in the Black Sea.” He told reporters he would also discuss the topic with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “It is clear that today we need to help Ukraine’s energy system,” he said.
Macron met Zelensky on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on Monday. Going into the high-stakes meeting with Trump, a French official briefed that Macron was prepared to face the US president with “total candor.” The French president said Trump was “very amenable and we were able to go into detail on these two conflicts, which are obviously important for peace in the world and for our security.”
Macron traveled to New York from Saint Pierre and Miquelon, a small French territory off Canada’s Atlantic coast, where he met with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. Carney has been embroiled in a war of words with Trump over a failed effort between the United States and Canada to strike a trade deal, resulting in tit-for-tat tariffs.
© 2024 AFP
