LONDON: Britain and France will chair military talks this week involving about 30 nations to form a coalition to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a UK defence official said on Wednesday. Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the Netherlands said last week they were ready "to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz". A further 24 countries then endorsed this statement.
The "expectation is that there will be a further meeting, military-to-military, the chiefs of defence staff of the wider group that has now signed ... later this week," the official said. The chief of the defence staff of Britain's armed forces, Richard Knighton, chaired a meeting of the initial six countries plus Canada on Sunday, The Times reported. The British defence official said that other countries would also now be potentially invited. "We recognise that we have a role to play in bringing together this coalition and helping to lead the rest of the world to develop a plan to ensure that we can reopen the Strait of Hormuz as quickly as possible," the official said.
Knighton was working "very closely with Fabien Mandon", the French armed forces chief of staff, the official added. The Times said the UK has offered to host a later summit in the southern naval port of Portsmouth or London to hammer out details and build the coalition, to ensure the waterway could be reopened "as soon as the conditions are right". — AFP
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