France accuses UK of undermining EU defence moves
Source: Reuters
(Updates with French comments) By Mark John BRUSSELS, Nov 13 (Reuters) - France accused Britain of undermining efforts to build a common European Union defence policy on Monday after London blocked an increased three-year budget for the Brussels agency driving the effort. Britain also declined at a meeting of EU defence ministers to contribute to a new common fund for defence research, insisting it was already spending heavily in the area and did not want to duplicate its efforts elsewhere. British Defence Secretary Des Browne refused to approve the 2009 component of the budget of the European Defence Agency (EDA), insisting the two-year-old agency had to provide more information about how it planned to spend its money. France's Michele Alliot-Marie said the dispute was over barely 1 million euros ($1.3 million) and accused Britain of not taking seriously past pledges to put its military might behind efforts to turn Europe into a global security player. "Haggling over 1 million euros for an agency which will be decisive in providing us with the resources and research means to prepare the future EU defence ... that appeared to me as a bit of a joke," she told reporters after the meeting. "I didn't see the relation between (British Prime Minister Tony) Blair's statements recalling his commitment to EU defence policy and this very static position," she added. Blair signed a landmark 1998 agreement in the French port of St Malo with French President Jacques Chirac that is seen as paving the way for a common EU defence policy. Ministers had been due to approve raising the EDA's budget to 29 million euros in 2009 from 22 million in 2007. In the end, ministers approved only the 2007 budget and said they would deal with the other two years at a later date. DEFENCE "DATING AGENCY" Some critics, particularly British conservatives, say the EU research fund could harm defence ties with the United States and is a covert move by nations such as France to weaken NATO. A British defence spokesman said Britain wanted to find a compromise on the future budget of the EDA but stressed that its view of the agency was more of a coordinating tool for member states rather than as a spending entity in its own right. "We don't see it as putting money into a central budget. For us it is more of a dating agency we can use if we want to," the spokesman said. Eighteen EU countries plus Norway contributed 54 million euros ($69 million) to the research fund in a rare step towards pooling the bloc's jealously guarded national defence budgets that is aimed at narrowing the United States' technology lead. "Defence research was regarded in Europe as a game only six people played," EDA chief Nick Witney said of perceptions that only France, Britain and a handful of others could afford to spend in the area. "That's a fundamental dead end. If Europe is to maintain a defence technological and industrial base, we have got to harness the full capabilities of the enlarged Union," he said. The research fund will focus its early work on technologies to protect troops in the field, ranging from detection of snipers in urban areas to new-generation body armour. France, Germany and Poland are the largest contributors and the aim is to come up with results within three years. Britain was also absent from a separate initiative launched on Monday by France, Finland, Sweden, Spain and Italy to jointly develop military applications for the high-tech wireless technology known as "software-defined radio".
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