EUROPE: EU foreign ministers have played down the decision to divide Iraq into three military sectors, insisting that the issue would not divide them.
During a meeting off the Greek island of Kastellorizo, the ministers acknowledged, however, that the EU must act decisively to overcome divisions caused by the crisis over Iraq.
They asked the EU foreign policy chief, Mr Javier Solana, to start devising a security concept for the EU with a view to defining the EU's security interests and finding a common approach to such issues as international terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, failed states, regional conflicts and weapons flows.
The Greek Foreign Minister, Mr George Papandreou, said the concept was part of the EU's effort to improve its relationship with the US after the war in Iraq.
"We all agree that, yes, there is a crisis, or at least a problem, in our transatlantic relationship.
"We arrived at a very important proposal: that we should set up a European security concept. If we want to have a substantive discussion with the United States, we first and foremost have to agree what our own priorities are."
The Polish Foreign Minister, Mr Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, said his country, along with the US and Britain, would administer Iraq's three military sectors. He said over 10 countries had already offered to participate in a stabilisation force in the country.
"The idea is to have all the countries ready to engage there by the end of this month," he said.
The plan to divide Iraq into three sectors was agreed at a meeting in London last week to which Europe's leading opponents of the war, France and Germany, were not invited.
France's Mr Dominique de Villepin and Germany's Mr Joschka Fischer said they were told of the plan before it was made public on Saturday.
Italy, Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Ukraine are believed to have agreed to send troops to Iraq.
The Ministers spent Friday night and much of Saturday on board a luxury yacht anchored off the island of Kastellorizo, close to the Turkish coast.
Much of their meeting was devoted to a discussion of the transatlantic relationship, which was opened by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen.
Mr Cowen said Europeans must understand that the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, had changed the US perception of the world, making security the issue which dominated all Washington's foreign policy decisions. Many in the Bush administration and in conservative think-tanks no longer believed that a more integrated Europe was in Washington's interest.
He said that many Europeans now questioned Washington's commitment to the multilateral institutions which it helped to establish after the second World War.