NATO chief calls for military tie-ups with EU

By Mark John

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer called on Saturday for wide-ranging military cooperation between the transatlantic alliance and the European Union to make better use of costly defense resources.

He made the call at a time when France is preparing possible steps to return to the NATO military structures it quit in the 1960s and to unveil proposals for the second half of this year aimed at boosting the 27-nation EU's fledgling defense power.

"I would like to see much more pooling of our capabilities, especially in areas such as ... transport helicopters, or in research and development, or in harmonizing our force structures and training methods," de Hoop Scheffer said.

He told a security conference in Brussels it was vital that NATO and the EU had equal access to the armies of their member countries, more than 20 of which belong to both bodies.

"If we duplicate -- or worse, go off in different directions -- we will both fail," he told the conference, organized by the German Marshall Fund think-tank.

The EU is becoming increasingly active in security missions across the world, from Kosovo in the Balkans to eastern Chad in Africa, but has yet to take on operations on the scale of NATO's 43,000-strong mission to bring peace to Afghanistan.

It has an agreement with NATO known as "Berlin Plus" under which it can call on alliance resources if needed. But cooperation between the two has in practice been impeded by a dispute between NATO ally Turkey and non-NATO Cyprus.

Western armies are increasingly complaining of shortages of key equipment such as helicopters and transport aircraft as they take part in numerous multinational security missions around the world.