BRUSSELS, March 30: The European Union launches its first military operation on Monday but this ground-breaking if modest new venture for the 15-nation economic bloc may draw scant attention because of the Iraq war.

To the intense frustration of EU officials, the launch of Operation Concordia, taking over a 300-soldier peacekeeping mission in Macedonia from Nato, has been overshadowed by the giant military action in the Gulf.

“In normal times, this would be front page news. Now, we’ll be lucky to get a line in the briefs column,” one official said.

Although tiny in scope and limited to six months, the Macedonian mission is an important test bed for future larger and more complex peacekeeping and humanitarian operations for the 15-nation EU’s embryonic Rapid Reaction Force.

It is also a model for burden-sharing with the United States in which the EU is gradually taking over the main responsibility for stabilising and rebuilding the Balkans after a decade of ethnic wars halted by US-led military intervention.

EUFOR: The force, known as EUFOR, will be under the command of German Admiral Rainer Feist, who is also Nato’s deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe. A French general will be in charge of the 300 lightly armed peacekeepers drawn from 27 nations.—Reuters