Anti-war leaders prepare for Euro defence meeting

The leaders of four European nations who opposed the US-led war in Iraq were meeting tomorrow to expand defence co-operation, prompting fears of more divisions within Nato and the EU.

French President Jacques Chirac, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Luxembourg Premier Jean-Claude Juncker will join Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, who announced the meeting in Brussels last month at the height of their dispute with Washington on how to deal with Iraq.

The meeting has drawn criticism from countries like Britain, Italy and the Netherlands whose governments supported the US-led war and back Nato as the core of Europe’s defence.

“Belgium and France will not guarantee our security,” Dutch Foreign Minister Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said recently. “Germany will not guarantee the security of the Netherlands. I cannot imagine a world order built against the United States.”

In interviews published today, Verhoftstadt insisted the plan was not to undermine Nato but to strengthen Europe’s contribution to the Atlantic alliance.

“This summit is not directed against Nato or the United States,” Verhofstadt said.

“We do not benefit from a Nato that remains a group of one super power with 18, larger or smaller dwarfs trailing behind,” he added. “We need to move towards a Nato with a strong European pillar.”

The half-day meeting is expected to focus on plans to better co-ordinate defence spending, acquiring high tech equipment sorely lacking in European armies and modernising forces to give Europe a sharper military edge.

Much of that has already been agreed by all 19 Nato allies. At a summit last November, they pledged to pool resources to fill the gaps in Europe’s arsenal and create a rapid response force to tackle threats around the world.

However, some in Europe want to go further, creating a European military headquarters separate from Nato, a European army and a mutual defence clause in a proposed European Union constitution similar to Nato’s pledge that an attack on one member is an attack on all.

Pro-Nato nations fear a wasteful duplication of Nato’s resources or an erosion of alliance unity.

With Germany and France seeking to avoid further alienating the US and repair relations after the Iraq war, diplomats expect the more radical suggestions to be dropped from tomorrow’s agenda.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair today warned forcefully against building up a European power to compete with the US.

“Some want a so-called multipolar world where you have different centres of power, and I believe will quickly develop into rival centres of power,” he told the Financial Times.

“Others believe, and this is my notion, that we need one polar power which encompasses a strategic partnership between Europe and America.”