LONDON: The UK and France will declare that the two nations\u2019 nuclear deterrents, while independent, can be co-ordinated and that they will jointly respond to any \u201cextreme threat to Europe,\u201d both countries said Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The declaration, to be signed Thursday, will state that the respective deterrents of both countries remain under national control \u201cbut can be co-ordinated, and that there is no extreme threat to Europe that would not prompt a response by both nations,\u201d the UK\u2019s Ministry of Defense (MoD) and the French presidency said in an overnight statement.<\/p>\n
French President Emmanuel Macron will sign the agreement Thursday as he wraps up his three-day state visit to the UK with a bilateral summit, where the allies will \u201creboot\u201d defense ties with a focus on joint missile development and nuclear co-operation.<\/p>\n
France\u2019s leader and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer will co-host the London summit, with the two sides also expected to discuss maintaining support for Ukraine and curbing undocumented cross-Channel immigration.<\/p>\n
Ahead of the gathering, which follows two days of varied events spanning pomp and politics, trade and culture, France and Britain announced their \u201cdefense relationship\u201d will be \u201crefreshed.\u201d<\/p>\n
It will see London and Paris order more Storm Shadow cruise missiles \u2014 long-range, air-launched weapons jointly developed by the two countries and called SCALP by the French \u2014 while stepping up work on a replacement system.<\/p>\n
The missiles have been shipped to Ukraine in significant numbers in recent years to help Kyiv in its war with Russia.<\/p>\n
The new partnerships herald a new \u201cEntente Industrielle\u201d making \u201cdefense an engine for growth,\u201d said the MoD.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs close partners and NATO allies, the UK and France have a deep history of defense collaboration and today\u2019s agreements take our partnership to the next level,\u201d Starmer said in the statement.<\/p>\n
Starmer and Macron will also on Thursday dial into a meeting of the so-called \u201ccoalition of the willing\u201d on Ukraine, a group of countries backing the embattled nation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONDON: The UK and France will declare that the two nations\u2019 nuclear deterrents, while independent, can be co-ordinated and that they will jointly respond to any \u201cextreme threat to Europe,\u201d both countries said Wednesday. The declaration, to be signed Thursday, will state that the respective deterrents of both countries remain under national control \u201cbut can …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":83505,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83490"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83506,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83490\/revisions\/83506"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}