 "French President Emmanuel Macron will open the security conference in Singapore, where China's assertiveness, Russia's war on Ukraine, and conflicts in Asia will most likely be discussed. File image/AP.")
French President Emmanuel Macron has called for stronger collaboration between Europe and Asia to fend off threats from countries like China and Russia that are seeking to build “spheres of coercion”.
Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Macron said, “We have a challenge of revisionist countries that want to impose – under the name of spheres of influence – spheres of coercion.”
“Countries that want to control areas from the fringes of Europe to the archipelagos in the South China Sea… that want to appropriate resources, whether fishing or mineral and crowd out others for their benefit,” he added.
The Shangri-La Dialogue is the biggest defence and security conference in Asia. The annual event came at a time when Russia is relentlessly waging a war against Ukraine, defying international pressure.
Macron’s speech came at the end of a tour of Vietnam, Indonesia and Singapore, which he used to present France as a reliable alternative for a region caught between Washington and Beijing.
Asian countries have found themselves torn between Washington’s tariff threats on one hand and Beijing, a major trading partner that has become increasingly forthright in territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
The French president urged the leaders present at the conference to “build a positive new alliance between Europe and Asia, based on our common norms, on our common principles”.
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View All“Our shared responsibility is to ensure with others that our countries are not collateral victims of the imbalances linked to the choices made by the superpowers,” he said.
He also took the opportunity to send a message to North Korea via its ally China to stop sending forces to help Russia’s war in Ukraine if Beijing “doesn’t want NATO being involved in Southeast Asia or in Asia”.
He warned Asian leaders against seeing the war in Ukraine as a distant problem with no relevance to them.
“If we consider that Russia could be allowed to take a part of the territory of Ukraine without any restriction, without any constraint, without any reaction of the global order, how would you phrase what could happen in Taiwan?” he said.
With inputs from agencies