PM delivers blunt message on European defence
PM Anders Fogh Rasmussen warned fellow EU countries that joint defence is still realistic, but urged continued military cooperation with the US
The Danish government will support a series of small steps to reinforce the EU's joint foreign and security policy this autumn, when member nations begin the dirty work of negotiating a new constitutional treaty for the European partnership.
Denmark will neither contribute to majority-rule resolutions on defence, nor move to withdraw the military defence of Europe from the NATO alliance with the US, Rasmussen said Monday at an EU conference at Copenhagen's Industriens Hus.
The prime minister warned against cutting EU security policy loose from a US partnership. Many domestic politicians, notably members of the anti-war Socialist People's Party, have begun to urge a complete abandonment of all US-European defence cooperation to protest US foreign policy.
Rasmussen said Monday that Europe has a long tradition of depending on the US to pull the region out of sticky situations, both during the Second World War, and during the Balkan conflict of the last decade.
The PM said that Denmark, as a small country, has a particular interest in maintaining its defence partnership with the US.
‘Who else could guarantee our security? Could France - could Germany? There's only one power on this earth that can: the United States of America,’ said Rasmussen.
Rasmussen said that Denmark's position in support of the US-led war in Iraq would garner a stronger profile, thanks to EU expansion.
‘The Eastern European countries know from their own histories, that their security has not been fully guaranteed by the major European nations, but by the US,’ said the prime minister.
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