Both the trans-Atlantic alliance and the EU are in a transition phase in regard to security matters: NATO is debating whether to expand eastward, and in Afghanistan it is embroiled in one of its most difficult military operations to date. The 27-member EU in recent years welcomed in new member states and is debating how its European Security and Defense Policy should look in the future.

Twenty-one of 27 EU nations are also members of NATO, and both organizations "are active together in the same theaters of conflict," Jean-Francois Bureau, NATO's assistant secretary-general for public diplomacy, said Tuesday at an experts' panel in Berlin.

The EU is training police in Afghanistan, where NATO's International Security Assistance Force is trying to secure the county. In Kosovo, nearly 90 U.S. police and judicial officials are expected to join the EU's civilian mission by the end of this year.

"From a NATO perspective, there is a huge need for even more cooperation" with the EU on military matters," Bureau said.

Gen. Henri Bentegeat, chairman of the EU Military Committee, said he expected that both organizations would ramp up cooperation in the coming years, mainly because their actions could be "complementary in the field of crisis management and military capabilities."

The EU could provide its police, judicial and customs experts to missions that NATO is manning with military firepower, Bentegeat said.

Then, of course, there are security missions the EU may have to take over because "the conflict parties don't want NATO to intervene," he said. This has happened in Lebanon, where the United Nations manned a security mission after the Israeli-Lebanese war of 2006.

Both French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who holds the current EU presidency, and U.S. President George W. Bush have stated repeatedly that the NATO-EU relationship needs to be enforced.

Brussels for years has discussed increasing its military profile, with some experts calling for an EU army. Yet in Europe, public support for military missions is at an all-time low.

"Most people in Europe don't see the link" of missions in Asia, Africa or the Middle East "to their own security," Bentegeat said.

All over Europe governments are reducing troop numbers and cutting their defense budgets -- a development that stands in contrast to the increasing number of security and crisis management missions European nations have had to handle recently.

Moreover, Europe does not have the strategic resources to shoulder NATO-style military missions, experts say.

"It would take Europe at least 10 years to build up a NATO-like operational command structure," said Adm. Ferdinando Sanfelice di Monteforte, Italy's former representative to the NATO and EU Military Committee.

Joachim Bitterlich, a former German ambassador to NATO, said EU governments should use their resources more efficiently.

"That means using only one plane, only one armored vehicle," instead of each nation spending a lot of cash to develop its own arms.

Bureau, the NATO official, added that the EU and NATO could also cooperate on arms.

"We all lack helicopters, we all lack strategic capabilities. These issues could be discussed together with the EU," he said.

Yet while there seems to be a lot of willingness to team up, in reality, political bickering has hindered progress on military cooperation between the two groups.

Sarkozy has done away with a lot of EU-skepticism about NATO by trying to improve relations with the United States, Bentegeat said, adding, however, that several political obstacles remain to be removed.

Nations of both groups have different views on Turkey's EU membership, the Cyprus issue and NATO's eastward expansion. Several EU nations also have criticized NATO for being too U.S.-driven.

EU officials put high hopes on U.S. President-elect Barack Obama, who has announced he would listen more to America's European allies. Yet Obama also will ask Europe to increase its efforts in Afghanistan or Iraq, experts say.

"The future relationship between the United States and Europe will cost the Europeans a bit more," Bitterlich said.

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