National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, met with the French Ambassador to the US, Philippe Etienne, in the White House after his return to Washington D.C.

The meeting came after a joint commitment by both US President Joe Biden and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, in their phone call on September 22, to initiate profound talks on a number of strategic matters in order to set the stage for rebuilding trust and to suggest tangible measures in the course of achieving common goals.

On his part, Sullivan welcomed Etienne's plan to communicate with US officials to add weight to the joint agenda ahead of Biden and Macron's meeting in Europe at the end of October.

Yesterday's meeting comes after tensions ran high in relations between the two countries since mid-September after the US President announced a strategic US-UK-Australian pact, which would come to be known as AUKUS. As a result of this pact, a multi-billion dollar deal Canberra had set up with Paris to purchase French submarines was laid to waste.