France's Macron urges calm after Trump and Zelenskiy clash

PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday and called for calm in an interview following Friday's clash between the U.S. and Ukrainian leaders at the White House.

The French presidency said Macron had also spoken to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, European Council President Antonio Costa and NATO chief Mark Rutte, on the eve of a meeting of European leaders on Ukraine on Sunday in London.

In an extraordinary Oval Office meeting on Friday, Trump threatened to withdraw support for Ukraine, three years after Russia invaded its smaller neighbour, alarming Europeans who fear a rushed ceasefire would embolden an expansionist Russia.

"I think that beyond the frayed nerves, everybody needs to calm down, show respect and gratitude, so we can move forward concretely, because what's at stake is too important," Macron said in an interview with several Sunday newspapers.

Macron and Starmer had taken the lead in Europe to convince Trump not to rush to a ceasefire and to provide security guarantees to Ukraine, presenting him with a plan to deploy peacekeepers in Ukraine during meetings in Washington this week.

Macron said in the interview that Zelenskiy had told him he was willing to "restore dialogue" with the United States, including on a deal giving U.S. access to revenues from Ukraine's natural resources, but did not say what Trump told him in the call.

"America's manifest destiny is to be alongside Ukrainians, I have no doubts about that," he was quoted as saying by La Tribune Dimanche. "I want the Americans to understand that withdrawing support to Ukraine is not in their interest."

Macron also said that at a planned European Union summit on March 6 he hoped there would be unanimous support for a joint debt plan at the EU level to raise "several hundred billion euros" for European defence.

(Reporting by Michel Rose, Elizabeth Pineau and Dominique Vidalon, Editing by Timothy Heritage)

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