Moves to bolster role of WEU

Date: 02/05/1996

By Elizabeth Wise

PLOUGHING through a sea of questions about the future shape of European security and the fate of the Western European Union, next week defence and foreign ministers week consider ways of making the ship stronger.

The UK, which currently holds the WEU presidency, hopes that when ministers from the 27 member and associated countries meet on 7 May, they will give their blessing to a range of operational advances aimed at giving the EU the capacity to carry out its own peace-keeping missions.

“We are not looking at the most ambitious operations, but we hope at least to be able to undertake some military action,” said a British official.

As both the EU and NATO are being reformed, member governments are wrestling with blueprints for future European security and considering how to fit the WEU into those plans.

But although it was charted as the Union's military arm, its officials complain that member states still consider the WEU as a talking shop rather than a centre for real military activity.

To combat those obstacles, efforts have been focused on stepping up activity in the WEU “situation centre”, a Brussels-based cell designed to help EU governments plan and conduct operations.

Officials hope the centre, from which the EU could organise troops and equipment and coordinate information, will be in place by the end of June and “play a full part in crisis management”.

They also say that member states have provisionally agreed to annual military exercises along the lines of those conducted by NATO.

Participating national units would not necessarily become WEU reserve units and might not even be those chosen for a WEU operation. Instead, said a WEU official, the goal was “to ensure national organisations are better attuned to the conduct of European organisation” in case the EU ever needs to go into the field. Work is also progressing on the “strategic lift” entity which would coordinate airlifts as well as sea or land transport for rescue missions or troop deployment. The WEU wants to study different national lift methods with an eye to coordinating them.

When the EU will be able to conduct operations on its own is a matter of debate. But one thing is clear: nothing will be decided until EU governments conclude their treaty reforms at the Intergovernmental Conference.

In any case, European governments and the WEU acknowledge that in real security questions, they will continue to work with NATO, and therefore with the United States.

Europeans are waiting, however, for US approval of the Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) - a plan to lend NATO assets to the EU for European operations.

Because they expect that decision to come at a 3 June meeting of NATO foreign ministers, the WEU ministers will probably refrain from calling for speed on CJTF. “There will be no crie de coeur,” said a WEU official. He said the ministers gathering in Birmingham next week would stress the “continuing importance of the WEU and the need for its further development”.