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The leaders of France, Belgium, Germany and Luxembourg were scheduled here Tuesday to hold a gathering aimed at boosting cooperation on defence issues.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose country is one of the EU's leading military powers along with Germany and France, joined critics of the initiative, saying: "It's a meeting between four member-states: I think there are 15 in the EU."
"We won't accept, and neither will the rest of Europe, anything that either undermines NATO or conflicts with the basic principles of European defence we've set out," he added.
But Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, who called for the mini-summit just before the Iraq war erupted, defended the initiative.
"This summit is not directed against NATO or the Americans," he told the Belgian newspaper Le Soir, saying the Iraq crisis has underlined the need for Europe to boost cooperation on defence and foreign policy.
And French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin added: "Everything is being done to act in tight cooperation and in strict harmony with the Atlantic Alliance."
"We are not starting a rival process, but on the contrary avoiding duplication and affirming the responsibility of Europe," de Villepin said on a visit to Prague.
Verhofstadt - facing elections in barely three weeks' time - launched the idea for the mini-summit at an EU summit on March 20, the day that war in Iraq broke out.
It drew immediate scepticism then. And the attacks were renewed Monday, on the eve of the meeting.
"If the embryo of an increased military cooperation were to develop in Brussels, I would regard it with a very critical eye," said Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini.
Commentators said the meeting could in theory help to create a pioneer group of EU states to advance the cause of defence integration.
"Let them do so .. otherwise (it would be) seen by Washington, London and some other EU capitals as, at best, pointless and, at worst, a divisive anti-US cabal," wrote the newspaper the Financial Times.
During the two-hour summit Tuesday morning, Verhofstadt was due to meet with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, French President Jacques Chirac and Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker.
The four agree that the deep divisions opened up in Europe by the Iraq war underline the need for the EU to put flesh on the bones of its common foreign and security policy.
But the meeting has fuelled talk of a two-speed EU, at a time when the bloc is struggling to build just the opposite, a Union increasingly united in areas other than purely economic affairs.
Along with Britain and Italy, Spain and the Netherlands have also expressed reservations, and ensured that neither EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana nor the EU's current Greek presidency attend.
European Commission President Romano Prodi's spokesman reiterated that the EU executive supports the idea of the summit, even if it is not participating.
Prodi "does not think that the strengthening of the European policy in matters of defence and common security are in any way a rivalry to... the power of the United States," the spokesman said.
Key issues at the mini-summit include creation of an EU armaments agency. The idea is not new: it is being discussed by the convention on the future of Europe, the body sketching out the EU's future shape, and most EU states back it.
"If this meeting...ends with proposals, with ideas offered and open to others, to all others, it will be a useful meeting," said Michel Barnier, the head of the convention's working group on defence.
SPACE.WIRE |