Chirac leads new defence challenge to US

The four EU countries most opposed to the war in Iraq agreed yesterday to form a planning and command centre for European military operations separate from Nato.

The agreement by France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg – although much watered down from the Belgian plan for an EU defence headquarters – will inevitably be presented in America, and by some in Britain, as part of a long-term strategy to undermine the western alliance.

After a brief mini-summit in Brussels, called by Belgium to build support for a European defence policy, the leaders of the four countries insisted that their intention was to fortify and "renew" Nato, not to destroy it.

Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor, said an EU defence policy and increased military spending would bolster the European "pillar" of Nato. The intention was not to drive the Americans out of European defence but to encourage Europeans to pull their own weight. "In Nato, we don't have too much America, but we do have too little Europe," he said.

Jacques Chirac, the French President, said the four wanted to build a stronger partner-ship between Europe and America, based on more equal military capability and contributions but also a clearer and more unified European voice within the alliance.

He replied to Tony Blair's criticism in a newspaper interview on Monday, which accused France of wanting a "multipolar" world that might set up Europe "in opposition to America". M. Chirac said the world was inevitably multi-polar. He said he, like Mr Blair, wanted a partnership with America, but that it must be a partnership based on equality and respect for differing points of view.

The timing of yesterday's meeting angered other EU member states, including Britain, and caused some embarrassment for France and Germany, which are trying to repair the damage caused by the transatlantic and EU rifts over Iraq. The last thing Paris in particular wants at present is to seem to be conspiring against Washington.

The four countries present yesterday were those that most directly opposed American efforts to use Nato resources in the Iraqi conflict. But the leaders said the two issues were not connected. The meeting, from which other EU countries were excluded then belatedly invited, had been planned for nine months, they insisted.

The outcome – a seven point call for greater European defence spending and an EU security and defence policy, working both within and outside Nato – will cause an awkward political problem for the British Government. There was much the Blair government would agree with, and has even campaigned for, since it scrapped Britain's opposition in principle to an EU defence policy at St Malo in 1998.

Even the idea of a small EU military planning and command unit – called a command "nucleus" rather than a "headquarters" in yesterday's statement – does not necessarily conflict with British ideas of what the EU should, and should not, be involved with in the defence field.

The Blair Government will nevertheless be irritated at being left out of any big initiative in EU defence policy, which is, par excellence, the area where Mr Blair hopes to be at the "heart of Europe". Realistically, as the participants, and especially M. Chirac, acknowledged yesterday, EU defence policy cannot get far without Mr Blair. Britain is, with France, the only serious military power in Europe.

Belgium, which called yesterday's meeting, spends only 1.3 per cent of its GDP on defence, and Germany only 1.5 per cent, compared with about 2.5 per cent for Britain and France. Guy Verhofstadt, the Belgian Prime Minister, was mocked as General Verhofstadt by his own national press yesterday for calling the mini-summit (just before Belgian elections) when his country makes such a small contribution to Nato.

Originally, Belgium had proposed a fully fledged EU military headquarters, which was seen by both London and Washington as the seedling for a rival to Nato. France and Germany succeeded yesterday in having this scaled down to a permanent military planning and command "nucleus" to help the EU take on military tasks such as the peace-keeping force in the Balkans.

The four countries said they were offering this idea to other member states but that they would in any case form a planning staff themselves in Tervuren, just outside Brussels, next year.

They also said they would set up the nucleus of an EU rapid reaction force – an idea already agreed by Britain – by adding small Belgian and Luxembourg units to an existing Franco-German brigade.