EU presses ahead with defense plans

By Shada Islam

BRUSSELS (DPA): The European Union made a further move Tuesday towards forging a defense and security identity which officials said could one day make the 15 nation bloc as important as the Atlantic military alliance.

Javier Solana, the EU's recently-appointed "high representative" for common foreign and security policy said Tuesday's inauguration of bloc's "interim military body" -- composed of senior representatives of the 15 EU governments' chiefs of staff -- was a "truly historic day" in the development of the Union.

"As part of the project we welcome for the first time a committee of uniformed military officers to the European Union," Solana said.

The EU foreign policy supremo said the bloc could only fulfill its global political ambitions if it had the military clout to back up its goals.

"Recent experience has made clear that if the union is to have a truly effective external policy it must have the capacity to take more responsibility for regional security," Solana said.

The establishment of the new military body reflects growing momentum in EU plans to become a military power.

Last week, the EU set up a political and security committee of ambassadors to develop and steer the crisis management capability of the Union.

EU defense ministers, meeting for informal talks in Portugal last month, also agreed on an "intense" program of cooperation to set up a crisis intervention force of up to 60,000 soldiers by 2003.

"More and more governments in the EU believe there is a genuine need for a European defense identity," said Nicholas Whyte, defense expert at the Brussels-based Center for European Policy Studies.

Whyte said that European governments were increasingly aware that a new United States administration which takes office next year may not be as involved in European affairs as in the past.

"If there is a choice between rescuing Montenegro or Taiwan, there is a feeling in Europe that Washington will choose Taiwan," Whyte said.

EU officials recognize that living in Washington's shadow is no longer good enough for a union which has political and security ambitions of its own.

"Our aim is to equip the union to respond effectively to international crises using all the tools at its disposal: diplomacy, economic measures, humanitarian assistance and ultimately the use of military forces," Solana said recently.

The EU's new defense structures will be strictly intergovernmental, with no role for the European commission or the European parliament.

Any decision to deploy troops would in practice require the consent of all 15 members.

Officials say the EU defense structures would work in close cooperation with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) which Solana headed until last October.

Traditionally NATO and the EU have stayed at arm's length. But this will change, say insiders.

Solana and George Robertson, NATO's current secretary general, will stay in close contact to ally U.S. fears about Europe's defense ambitions.

Also, except for the French representatives, officers on the military committees at NATO and the EU will be the same people.

Concern that Europe's plans could weaken NATO's role in Europe has been expressed in recent months by the U.S.

But others say it is wrong to see Europe's security plans as being in competition with NATO.

"The European defense identity will probably be a component of NATO," Whyte says. "It will not be completely independent."