Emmanuel Macron arrived Friday in Japan for a G7 summit that must agree on new sanctions against Russia and define the position of Western powers against China, which the France wants "both engaging and demanding".

The French president landed in Hiroshima in the early morning, joining the Japanese, American, British, German, Canadian and Italian leaders who had already arrived in the city symbol of peace, hit by the American atomic bomb on August 6, 1945 at the end of World War II. "This summit comes in a context of superposition of crises," with the war led by Moscow in Ukraine but also the "rise of tensions between China and the United States" or climate change, said the Elysee.

Paris wants to make its little music heard on the position towards Beijing, calling on the Europeans not to align themselves with a confrontational approach caressed by Washington. "The negotiation was relatively easy. There was no strong opposition between the members of the group," an adviser to Emmanuel Macron assured journalists in Hiroshima.



"A G7 of cooperation"

"This G7 will not be a G7 of confrontation, it will be a G7 of cooperation and demand towards China," he added. "It will be said during this G7 that China has an important role to play, that China has a status, that China has responsibilities, that we want it to assume them", but "under conditions that are sustainable, that is to say by entering into cooperation frameworks that meet a certain number of standards, of standards, of values," explained this adviser.

"This is exactly the way of seeing the France and its European partners," he said. According to him, the leaders will "agree at the G7 that China" must "exert its influence with Russia to stop its aggression against Ukraine".

The French presidency also said that the list of new entities to be sanctioned as part of the response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine was "closed" on the European side, in coordination with the other G7 countries. This time it is a question of "limiting the circumvention of sanctions" already imposed on Moscow for nearly 15 months.

The United Kingdom announced Friday morning sanctions targeting diamonds and Russian nickel, the adviser to Emmanuel Macron said that this subject was still "under discussion in Brussels". The United States also unveiled on Friday new sanctions against the "Russian war machine", as if to set the tone for this G7.

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