Blair heals rift by agreeing to EU defence missions

Britain has agreed for the first time to far-reaching proposals to allow a core of EU countries to forge ahead with closer defence co-operation and launch joint military missions.

The deal, struck in weekend talks in Berlin, marks a serious effort to heal a rift over EU defence, which pitched the UK against France and Germany in the wake of the Iraq war.

At a summit with the German Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, and the French President, Jacques Chirac, Tony Blair gave his blessing to a Franco-German plan to let groups of European nations develop closer ties.

In Paris and Berlin, the deal is seen as a significant turning point, as one EU diplomat put it, "because of the chemistry between the leaders and because it signalled that the UK is backing EU business". To appease Mr Blair, a document agreed this weekend in Berlin stresses the role of Nato as the "basis of collective defence for its members". But the text does not resolve the vexed issue of how to set up EU military planning.

That turned into an explosive political issue in April, when France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg pledged to deepen their military ties and set up a defence planning facility at Tervuren, a suburb of Brussels.

The UK opposed this, saying it would duplicate Nato's facilities and undermine the transatlantic alliance. Britain has since suggested an EU planning cell should be based at Shape, the military headquarters of the transatlantic alliance at Mons in Belgium.

Both options will now be considered along with the possibility of beefing up military planning headquarters in Britain, France or Germany.

Even French and German diplomats agree the Tervuren project has become so politically charged that it can never become an EU military planning centre and some believe another site must be found. But the Berlin document states that the EU "should have the common capacity to plan and conduct operations without recourse to Nato capabilities".

For Britain, that does not mark a significant change because it has always accepted that EU missions can be mounted from headquarters outside Nato, as is the present European mission to Congo.

But the UK has shifted its position on Franco-German proposals, outlined in a draft EU constitution, for so-called "structured co-operation" on defence. These would allow groups of nations to get together to mount missions without the involvement of all EU countries and would not require case-by-case approval.

In a White Paper this month before talks on the new constitution, the Government said it would not support "all the proposals as currently set out" on defence, and officials cited "structured co-operation" as a problem. Britain was worried that, without approval of other nations, groups of countries could mount operations in the name of the EU.

But in the Berlin summit document, the UK, France and Germany agreed that "structured co-operation in security and defence policy should be allowed for those countries ready to achieve faster and deeper co-operation".

Britain is more relaxed because it has been reassured that EU defence can become credible only if the UK is involved. Britain and France are the EU's biggest military powers by some way, and the idea of European co-operation was launched at an Anglo-French summit in St Malo in 1998.

The UK also believes that cooperation among small groups may be unavoidable because consultation with all EU states would make decision-making impossible. The EU already includes four neutral nations and is to expand next year. Given Britain's potential to play a leading role in EU defence it makes little sense for the UK to move at the pace of the smallest military powers. The fine details will be negotiated in a conference on the new EU constitution, which starts in Rome in less than two weeks.

The Schröder-Blair-Chirac meeting has inspired anxiety among the smaller nations, who fear they will lose out. Foreign ministers and officials from 17 smaller and medium-sized countries will hold talks in the margins of the UN in New York to discuss how to stop France, Germany, the UK, Italy and Spain dominating negotiations.