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US President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron shake hands ahead of a meeting in Rome.Credit:AP

“It was not done with a lot of grace. I was under the impression that France had been informed long before that the deal was not going through. Honest to God,I did not know you had not.”

A major diplomatic brawl erupted in September when thefederal government axed a deal for France to design and help build 12 diesel-powered submarines in favour of a possible eight nuclear-powered boats supplied with the help of the US and UK.

The three countries had negotiated the pact behind closed doors for months,prompting Paris to accuse its allies of a “stab in the back”.

Biden’s comments in Rome undermine the Morrison government’s insistence that the sensitive nature of the AUKUS agreement meant France could not have been informed any sooner that the lucrative submarine contract was about to be ditched.

Foreign Minister Marise Payne told a Senate estimates hearing this week that France was not told earlier because the AUKUS partnership covered “the most sensitive issues at the heart of our sovereign defence strategy”.

“It was the judgment of the government that that sensitivity precluded broader information sharing substantially in advance of the announcement,” she said.

Biden’s remarks also appear to confirm reporting in the US media that the White House thought Australia was going to tell Paris about the decision much earlier than the formal announcement on September 16.

“I was under the impression that certain things had happened that[actually] hadn’t happened,” Biden said.

“Having said that,there’s too much we have done together,suffered together,celebrated together for anything to really break this up.”

Macron,who this week used a phone call with Prime Minister Scott Morrison to say the submarine decision had “broke the relationship of trust” between France and Australia,told reporters in Rome that Washington and Paris were “building the trust again”.

“Trust is like love. Declaration is good,but proof is better,” Macron said.

There is a chance Macron and Morrison will run into each other at the G20 summit in Rome or the COP26 climate summit to follow in Glasgow,but no formal meeting has been confirmed.

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