European Union defence ministers are meeting in Brussels today to seek ways to strengthen their defence projects a month after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
The informal meeting was expected to be dominated by discussion of the US-led strikes in Afghanistan.
The EU has put the development of its own fledgling defence force on the fast track in the wake of the terrorist attacks in the US. It vowed to make the force operational as quickly as possible.
The 15 EU nations are in the process of assembling a rapid reaction force of 60,000 troops capable of moving quickly to prevent or quell armed skirmishes or deliver humanitarian relief in natural or man-made disasters.
That force was mandated by the EU's Helsinki summit of 1999 to be ready to move by 2003, but recent events have spurred the EU to hasten preparations.
The force is tied tightly to cooperation with NATO in logistics and materials.
Also on the defence ministers' agenda were military intelligence and the growing EU role in the Balkans, after the US warned it would pull its peacekeeping troops out of the region should they be needed in the campaign in Afghanistan.
AFP