French workers fillet mackerels in a fish processing plant in the port of Boulogne-sur-Mer, France. File/Reuters

Gulf Today Report

Britain warned France on Monday to back down in a fish row within 48 hours or face legal action under the Brexit trade deal. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has set a deadline for dispute with France to be resolved before the UK moves ahead with legal action.

Truss hit out at the French for behaving "unfairly" and accused them of operating outside the terms of the Brexit trade deal.

Britain's Foreign Secretary Liz Truss speaks during an interview. File photo

“The French have made completely unreasonable threats, including to the Channel Islands and to our fishing industry, and they need to withdraw those threats or else we will use the mechanisms of our trade agreement with the EU to take action,” Truss told Sky.

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Meanwhile, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison denied that he had lied to France’s President Emmanuel Macron while secretly negotiating a submarine deal with the United States and Britain, an accusation that has escalated a rift over Australia’s surprise cancelation of a French deal.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison attends a meeting. File photo

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce suggested France was overreacting, saying, "we didn’t deface the Eiffel Tower.”

Australia in September dropped the 5-year-old, 90 million Australian dollar ($66 million) contract with majority French state-owned Naval Group to build 12 conventional diesel-electric submarines. Instead, Australia made an alliance with Britain and the US to acquire a fleet of eight nuclear-powered submarines built with US technology.

Macron told Australian reporters late on Sunday in Rome, where both leaders attended the Group of 20 nations summit, the new alliance was "very bad news for the credibility of Australia and very bad news for the trust that great partners can have with Australia.”

France’s President Emmanuel Macron gestures during a meeting. File photo

Answering a reporter’s question about whether he thinks Morrison lied to him, Macron replied, "I don’t think, I know” he lied.

Morrison, who was also in Rome, said he did not lie to Macron, while senior Australian government ministers criticized the French leader for escalating the dispute through the personal slight.

"We didn’t steal an island, we didn’t deface the Eiffel Tower, it was a contract,” Joyce said in the Australian capital on Monday.

"Contracts have terms and conditions, and one of those terms and conditions and propositions is that you might get out of the contract. We got out of that contract,” Joyce added.