"We have chosen to accept the invitation to forge a partnership (with the United States) and prove that a strong and united Europe is the best partner for the United States, which thinks along the same lines," said Solana.

"We Europeans must be more involved in Iraq through the European Union... With the United States, we want to back the next steps in the Iraqi political process: the drafting of a constitution and the creation of effective democratic institutions," he said.

"A joint effort by the EU and US is also indispensable to deal with two other priority issues, first of which is Iran," said Solana.

"We agree that it would be unacceptable for Iran to have nuclear weapons capability," he said.

"The second priority is peace in the Middle East. Both the EU and the US have chosen to take advantage of the present political openness in relations between Israel and the Palestinians."

"Naturally, the trans-Atlantic agenda goes much further than that, too. It includes Afghanistan, China, Russia, global warming, reforming the UN, revising the nuclear non-proliferation pact, the Doha round," Solana said.

"When the EU and the United States head in the same direction, we are capable of producing magnificent results," he concluded.

All rights reserved. copyright 2018 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.