October 2, 2003	Thursday	Sha’aban 5, 1424

BRUSSELS, Oct 1: The United States on Tuesday restated its firm opposition to plans by a European Union quartet led by France and Germany to create a military headquarters separate to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato).

There are indications that Britain is coming round to proposals pioneered by France and Germany for greater EU cooperation on defence, but it is also standing fast against the creation of an independent military HQ.

Italy is set to propose a “virtual” command structure as a means of circumventing the brewing row over the quartet’s plans to build a new EU HQ at Tervuren, outside Brussels, sources said.

The US ambassador to NATO, Nicholas Burns, said the military alliance remained supportive of EU defence plans under a framework cooperation accord known as “Berlin Plus”.

“What we cannot support and will not support is the creation of an alternative EU military headquarters, whether it’s in Tervuren or some other place, in Brussels or elsewhere,” he told reporters.

“That would be, we think, duplicative, needlessly costly and that would be in essence a contradiction to the Berlin Plus agreements,” Mr Burns said.

“There’s just a very few countries that are thinking about going in a separate direction. We would hope that those plans would not be materialized because it would not be productive for the future of NATO-EU relations.”—AFP