"Senior administration officials have been in touch with their French counterparts to discuss AUKUS, including before the announcement," the official told AFP after the announcement of the three-way alliance involving the United States, Australia and Britain in which Canberra will acquire US nuclear submarines.

"I will leave it to our Australian partners to describe why they sought this new technology," the official said.

"We cooperate closely with France on shared priorities in the Indo-Pacific and will continue to do so," the official added.

But a French embassy spokesman denied there had been consultations.

"We had not been informed before the first news of this deal was published in the American and Australian press, a few hours before Joe Biden's official announcement," the spokesman said.

The AUKUS agreement scuppered Australia's multi-billion-dollar 2016 deal to buy submarines from France, which had been personally backed by President Emmanuel Macron.

France's foreign minister branded the new agreement "a stab in the back."

"I'm very angry today, and bitter... This is not something allies do to each other," Jean-Yves Le Drian said.

China condemned the deal as an "extremely irresponsible" threat to stability in the region.