Chirac calls for new EU defence system

President Jacques Chirac has responded to the German Foreign Minister's recent call for a more integrated European federation by making concrete proposals for European defence once Paris assumes the six-month EU presidency on July 1st.

Addressing officers from the French Institute of Higher Defence Studies, the President spoke of a two-speed European defence system - comparable to the flexible political integration proposed by the German Foreign Minister, Mr Joschka Fischer - in which countries that wish to commit the necessary resources and who are ready to pool their military assets, forge ahead without waiting for the others.

"Any of the 15 members of the Union who wish to become part of this common effort will be welcome . . . But those who do not wish to make the same commitment . . . should not prevent the bolder members from advancing," he said.

Until now, officials had emphasised the need to complete institutional reforms under the French presidency. But in his half-hour address, Mr Chirac did not even mention the Inter-Governmental Conference which is trying to streamline the workings of the EU.

Instead, he defined France's ambition to turn Europe into "a leading political player in tomorrow's world" and create a "more coherent and forceful" European foreign policy. "The European Union must make its voice heard more clearly on the international stage," he repeated.

Mr Chirac called Serbia "an apparently entrenched bastion, where the worst memories of Europe's past still fester: nationalism, ethnic persecution, hatred of others and contempt for freedom". Without naming President Slobodan Milosevic, he alluded to Yugoslavia as "an offence to the founding principles of the Union" for which the EU must find a solution.

France will take two Yugoslav initiatives during its presidency: a summit between Balkan countries that have espoused democracy and the EU ("Europeans speaking to other Europeans") and the consideration of "a new European rapid reaction force for the North Mediterranean area". This force would be in addition to the 60,000-strong European army agreed in Helsinki last December. By the end of the year, France will ask EU member states to commit soldiers and weapons to the crisis force which should be available from 2003 for deployment outside Europe.

The French President also delivered a pointed message to President Clinton, who was to arrive in Lisbon for a summit with EU leaders yesterday. "I cannot conceal my reservations about any initiative that, far from supplementing international arms control arrangements, would jeopardise the ABM Treaty, which has been one of the pillars of strategic stability for 30 years," he said.

Mr Chirac referred to the US development of a Nuclear Missile Defence (NMD) system - a vestige of President Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" programme - which would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

"How can we convince countries that might be ready to renounce acquiring new weapons, when the most powerful countries feel it is necessary to develop technologies that jeopardise the strategic balance?" he asked.

As "friends and allies", he added, the EU had to tell the US that it is harming non-proliferation and risks reviving the arms race.