PARIS \u2014 French President Francois Hollande said Sunday that negotiations with Moscow were under way to find a solution to a dispute over the sale of two Mistral warships, frozen over the Ukraine crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We are busy negotiating a solution to the crisis,” over the \u20ac1.2 billion ($1.5 billion) sale, Hollande said on French television.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The delivery of the first warship has been suspended for six months over Russia’s role in the Ukraine conflict, straining ties between Paris and Moscow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Russian President Vladimir Putin last week dismissed the refusal to deliver the ship, but said he expects France to repay the money paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Of course not delivering the ships according to a valid contract is a bad sign, but from the point of view of supporting our defense capabilities, to tell you frankly, this has no importance,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Mistrals have placed France in a sticky situation. If it breaches the contract with Russia, it faces hefty fines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it would also risk the wrath of its allies around the world if it were to deliver the hot-button technology to Russia at a time when Moscow is in the diplomatic deep-freeze over the Ukraine conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite a ceasefire in Ukraine, fighting has not entirely stopped and Hollande has said repeatedly that conditions were “still not right” for the delivery of the warships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The French president said “we will see if we discuss it Friday” when he meets Putin during a trip to Armenia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
French President Francois Hollande said Sunday that negotiations with Moscow were under way to find a solution to a dispute over the sale of two Mistral warships, frozen over the Ukraine crisis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":113980,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":16,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[33,16],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2793],"class_list":["post-52884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-naval"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"Q46XCZGRWFCSBLVNU2SBNC4UVM","arc_canonical_url":"\/naval\/2015\/04\/19\/france-russia-negotiating-deal-on-mistrals\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n