France, Germany Deepen Uk Rift

Europe's anti-war camp risked new tensions with
Britain and the US yesterday by establishing a joint
military headquarters that could operate separately
from Nato.

President Jacques Chirac of France and Gerhard
Schröder, the German chancellor, insisted their
decision was not directed against Nato, which
expressed its "concern".

The initiative was immediately dismissed by the US,
which said Europe needed more forces and equipment,
not more headquarters.

With emotions still running high, Guy Verhofstadt, the
Belgian prime minister and host of the brief but
controversial Brussels summit, said he wanted to
strengthen Nato's "European pillar".

"If we want to count on the international scene, if we
want to avoid division, which we experienced during the
Iraq crisis, then it's absolutely necessary that we have
European defence," he said. "Otherwise EU foreign
policy is not credible."

Britain called yesterday's meeting "extremely
unhelpful". Privately, officials were far more scathing,
referring to the "coalition of the unwilling" and the "not
so famous four".

Tony Blair, who was not invited and did not seek to
take part, said as he travelled to Moscow for a meeting
with the Russian president: "What is important is that
nothing is done that in any shape or form undermines
the Nato relationship."

Spain and Italy, which also backed the US in Iraq,
were against the mini-summit, as was Javier Solana,
the EU's foreign policy chief and the man charged with
galvanising the union's slow-moving defence ambitions.

Comments from both the French and German leaders
were strikingly defensive.

"In Nato, we do not have too much America, we have
too little Europe," Mr Schröder said, "and that is what
we want to change."

But Nato diplomats are incandescent at the initiative,
which they see as a deliberate breach of the principle
that EU efforts must not duplicate what the
US-dominated alliance already does.

Luxembourg's prime minister, Jean Claude Junker,
made up the so-called gang of four, whose opposition
to Washington's war plans brought the pejorative label
"old Europe".

Overall, the outcome was symbolic enough to annoy
the summiteers' many critics while failing to mark
significant progress of any kind.

The four leaders referred back to existing initiatives to
strengthen EU military power but made no
commitments to spend any more money.

France apart, the other participants are among the
lowest spenders on defence as a proportion of gross
domestic product. Germany spends 1.5% of GDP,
Belgium spends 1.3% and Luxembourg just 0.8%.

The "multinational force headquarters for joint
operations" is to be set up and a decision on an EU
military planning unit near Brussels is to be taken by
December.

Another pledge involved boosting the EU's fledgling
60,000-strong rapid reaction force, which is strongly
backed by Britain, by adding Belgian commandos and
Luxembourg reconnaissance units to a Franco-German
brigade.

Meanwhile, a document leaked to a newspaper said
German military planners proposed that Berlin take the
lead in creating a unified EU army by 2014, funded by
an EU defence budget and under central control from
Brussels.

A defence ministry spokesman confirmed the
existence of the document, on which the
Sueddeutsche Zeitung carried a report, and said it had
been drawn up last summer as a "brainstorming" paper
for the convention drawing up an EU constitution.