EU: Participants in today's mini-summit of four countries on European Union defence have rejected charges that they risk driving a wedge between the EU and the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance, and worsening transatlantic relations, writes Denis Staunton in Brussels.
Belgium's Prime Minister, Mr Guy Verhofstadt, who is hosting his counterparts from Germany, France and Luxembourg in Brussels, said that NATO would be strengthened if the US had a stronger European defence partner. "There is no benefit to NATO in remaining a group with one superpower and 18 bigger and smaller dwarfs chasing behind it," he said.
British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair warned against any attempt to make Europe a military counterweight to the US.
"Some want a so-called multi-polar world where you have different centres of power \ I believe will quickly develop into rival centres of power; and others believe, and this is my notion, that we need one polar power which encompasses a strategic partnership between Europe and America," he said.
Italy's Foreign Minister, Mr Franco Frattini, said his government would view with suspicion any move towards creating a core group of EU member-states that would co-operate on defence.
"If the embryo of an increased military co-operation were to develop in Brussels, I would regard it with a very critical eye."
The EU's foreign policy chief, Mr Javier Solana, said it was impossible to build a credible EU defence identity without Britain, and he urged the four leaders meeting in Brussels to focus on improving their military capability rather than on creating new hierarchies.
"We must not take the wrong approach. The approach must be first to have the capabilities, then to have other things. You may have committees, you may have structures, you may have whatever you want. But if you don't have the capabilities, you don't have much," he said.
The four leaders appear to have scaled down their ambitions for the summit and are unlikely to back a proposal by Mr Verhofstadt to set up an EU military headquarters at Tervuren, outside Brussels.
The French Foreign Minister, Mr Dominique de Villepin, told the Czech President, Mr Vaclav Klaus, yesterday that the meeting was about "complementing and strengthening" NATO rather than undermining it.
Mr Klaus said after the meeting that the Czech Republic had an interest in strengthening the transatlantic relationship and would not support any move that could weaken Europe's links with Washington.
Mr Verhofstadt told Belgian newspapers yesterday that he hoped today's summit would mark the start of greater military co-operation in the EU. He wants joint EU command and training facilities and closer co-ordination of arms procurement and strategic research.