BRUSSELS, Nov 17: The European Union agreed on Monday to set up a defence agency to bolster and coordinate military capabilities across the bloc, but remained split over a proposed headquarters that has angered the United States.

France sought to soothe Washington’s concerns that its ambition — shared by Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg — to set up an independent planning and operation headquarters for EU crisis management missions was a challenge to NATO.

In an interview ahead of a meeting with her EU counterparts, Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said Paris had in mind a “cell of 30 or 40 people” rather than a fully fledged headquarters with hundreds of staff.

“The Americans must understand...that for us, European defence complements the (NATO) alliance,” she told the Belgian daily La Libre Belgique. “It will not work against NATO.”

The United States says a new headquarters would squander scarce defence resources across the alliance, duplicate NATO’s planning capabilities and potentially challenge the Atlantic alliance’s primacy over European security.

Britain, which has come under pressure from Washington to cool the ambitions of its EU partners, made clear it was no more enthusiastic about the smaller cell proposed by Alliot-Marie.

“We have made no secret of the fact that we see no need for a separate operational headquarters,” British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon told reporters.

“We don’t judge that it would be militarily effective and in the end, when there are scarce resources...we should not be talking about creating institutions that are not necessary.”—Reuters