China decries US, Britain, Australia security partnership

China’s foreign ministry on Thursday decried a new US-Britain-Australia security partnership that will involve helping Canberra acquire nuclear-powered submarines, saying the three countries are damaging regional peace and stability.

China will closely monitor the situation, ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a daily news briefing in Beijing.

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UK defense industry will get a boost from pact

Britain’s defense industry will get a boost from a new nuclear submarine pact to share US and British technology with Australia, defense Secretary Ben Wallace said on Thursday.

Wallace said the pact was not a “betrayal” of the French, whose own submarine contract with Australia was canceled.

“There will be a boost for the British defense industry in this collaboration because we have sub-systems that Australia doesn’t have that we will be able to offer into that”,” Wallace told the BBC.

IAEA

The UN nuclear watchdog said on Thursday that Australia, Britain and the US had informed it of their three-way security partnership that will give Australia access to US technology to build nuclear submarines.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement that the countries had informed it “that a critical objective of this cooperation will be to maintain ‘the strength of both the nuclear non-proliferation regime and

Australia’s exemplary non-proliferation credentials’ and that they will be ‘engaging with the IAEA throughout the coming months’.”

Read more:

Britain: Submarine pact does not herald new Cold War with China

US move to dislodge France from Australia submarine deal is incoherent: Ministers

Australia to get US nuclear submarine technology as China looms large