By Jill Fraser
MELBOURNE
The guns boomed over Sydney Harbour as an official full 21-gun salute saw Australia welcome Francois Hollande - the first French president to visit Australia.
Hollande wound up his trip Down Under on Wednesday with a joint press conference with Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
The bilateral relationship is underpinned by strong and enduring historical links – consular and diplomatic engagement since 1842, and cooperation in both the First and the Second World Wars.
Hollande and Abbott have been deepening the ties, Hollande stating that Australia and France should still view themselves as allies more than a century after World War I because both countries are now engaged in fighting "terrorism" together.
The 60-year old leader of the French Socialist Party was accompanied by a high-powered delegation of French corporate leaders and trade, technology and investment have been high on the agenda.
France has the world's fifth-biggest economy and is Australia's 18th-largest merchandise trading partner, with trade between the two countries worth $5.3 billion in 2013.
Equally high on the agenda has been the desire to work to strengthen their security and military ties.
Hollande remarked on the two countries’ long history of friendship and military sacrifice but highlighted high-tech industrial development as the way forward for the two countries.
"What needs to bring us closer together is technology," he said via an interpreter.
At his joint press conference with Abbott in Canberra Wednesday, the French president said the partnership between the two countries was “linked by history.”
“[A] dramatic and human history, and we will have an opportunity to recognize the sacrifice of Australian soldiers who came to save France twice, and we will never forget this.”
Hollande said the two countries remained allied on defense issues.
"We have French companies, Australian companies that are currently developing various pieces of equipment which are most important for France's strategic strength, and these components are currently being manufactured in Australia," he said.
He said France had done what it could to prevent its citizens fighting for Islamic State of the Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL.
"We must be vigilant, and we must be strong," he said. "We must be very clear that we condemn these sort of actions... and we must also act to ensure that violence in Jerusalem ceases, and that conditions for resuming talks may finally be such that this dialogue can occur.
"We must act and we must be responsible in our actions."
Abbott said his next priority is to establish a free trade agreement with the European Union. Hollande said he supports Abbott in this endeavor.
Following his joint press conference with Abbott, Hollande, in reply to a question from a reporter, said he wants commitments that arise from the 2015 climate conference in Paris to be ambitious and a new deal on cutting emissions to be legally binding.
“It has to be legally binding, and it has to be differentiated and it has to have some sort of link with the Green Fund,” Hollande said.
He is hoping that “quite a number of countries” follow Europe in making early announcements about their new targets.
“What I want to avoid is waiting until the last minute,” he said.
The News Limited press noted that in Sydney, Hollande took an apparent swipe at Abbott's intransigence on addressing climate change at the G20, which he described as a success due to commitments made and pointedly included commitments on climate change.
“But I don't want to make a nuisance of myself so I won't dwell on that,” he said.
www.aa.com.tr/en
