Turkey challenges EU bid to create new defence body

Date: 22/04/1999

By Simon Taylor

TURKISH opposition threatens to undermine groundbreaking plans aimed at giving the EU the military muscle to match its economic weight in the world.

The French, British and German governments had hoped that this weekend's 50th anniversary NATO summit in Washington would endorse ambitious proposals for a European Security and Defence Identity (ESDI). This would allow EU countries to pursue military aims using NATO weaponry, transport and intelligence in cases where the US did not want to get involved.

But Turkey, which has been a member of NATO since the 1950s, has indicated that it would block plans to set up a new defence body if it could not be a full member of the organisation.

" We cannot accept anything where Turkey is not given full and equal rights," said one senior Turkish official. "You cannot expect Turkey to sign a blank cheque," he added, referring to plans to allow a new European defence organisation to use NATO assets.

Europe's hopes of moving forward with the ESDI at the EU's Cologne summit in June would suffer a major setback if no diplomatic solution to the Turkish problem could be found in time.

Supporters of the initiative believe that the Kosovo crisis has injected added impetus into the drive to give EU countries the military capability to intervene in crisis areas without the US.

Under the plan, a European force could take action in a situation like Kosovo even if Washington was against deploying its own troops. ESDI advocates cite the Western European Union (WEU) policing projects in Albania and the extraction force in Macedonia as examples of Union operations.

Defence analysts also argue that the willingness of EU governments to back NATO air-strikes against Serbia unconditionally has increased US readiness to let Union governments act on their own.

Eckhard Lübgemeier, defence specialist at the SPD-linked Friedrich Ebert Stiftung in Bonn, says Washington has been impressed with the way German politicians have overcome the country's pacifist element, despite evident cracks within the ruling Green Party. Nevertheless, the SPD-Green coalition has sanctioned Germany's first attacks on a foreign country since the Second World War.

" Kosovo has put some wind in the sails of the ESDI," said Charles Grant of the London-based Centre for European Reform, who is close to UK Prime Minister Tony Blair's thinking on European defence.

Senior NATO officials are confident that the summit will endorse the ESDI plans as part of its new 'strategic concept'. But they admit that much diplomatic work will be needed to overcome Turkish objections.

Ankara is resisting pressure to include a specific reference to the Anglo-French joint defence initiative signed in St Malo last year in the NATO summit conclusions. This stressed the need to give the Union "the capacity for autonomous action, backed up by credible military forces".

Meanwhile, French NATO officials have insisted that the ESDI does not need Washington's blessing. They argue that NATO has already agreed to allow the WEU, which includes ten EU countries among its ranks, to use alliance assets. While European NATO countries have around 3 million military staff compared to the US' 1.5 million, they depend on the Americans' 1,000 long-range transport aircraft to get troops into crisis zones.

This weekend, NATO leaders will focus on the crisis in Kosovo, including the security of neighbouring states, and begin talks on how the prospect of alliance membership might help stabilise Balkan countries.

Countries from the former Warsaw pact which are applying to join NATO will be disappointed that existing members have decided not to expand the organisation for the time being.

Turkey will veto plans for a European Security and Defence Identity (ESDI) within NATO if she is not allowed to participate.