Germany, France, Belgium and Luxembourg, which opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq, decided at a mini-summit in Brussels Tuesday to set up their own command headquarters for military operations outside the NATO arena and to beef up European military cooperation.

"We believe that NATO structures should be used as much as possible -- they shouldn't be duplicated, nor should the role of the Atlantic Alliance be scaled down -- for the initiatives undertaken to succeed," the Polish foreign ministry said in a statement.

It said that all member states should be able to participate in shaping EU defence policy, and that the quartet's proposals could serve as a starting point for EU-wide talks at a later date.

The Polish press has criticised the four-way summit, calling it "a cause for concern" that showed it was "either too early or too late for a common European defence policy".

SPACE.WIRE