Paul Reynolds News Online World Affairs correspondent

Diplomatic warfare has broken out in Nato after a call by France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg for the creation of headquarters and planning staff from which a purely European Union based defence might emerge.

Facing criticism: The "Gang of Four"

Some European diplomats sympathetic to Nato fear that, unless this trend is stopped, we might already be witnessing the last years of the transatlantic alliance.

What angers and irritates critics is that the four countries (the "gang of four" as they are being called) want to set up new structures outside Nato to be based in the Belgian town of Tervuren, east of Brussels.

These, it is feared by Nato supporters, will gradually expand and take over from existing Nato headquarters and planning units.

There is already a European Rapid Reaction Corps headquarters and the EU is committed to building up a 60,000 strong force - but in cooperation with, and not in competition with Nato.

The timing could not have been worse. It comes when the United States is already angry with some European countries over Iraq European diplomat

One diplomat said: "This is an attempt to expand the European Union role in defence at the expense of Nato.

"Over the years, this could become a vehicle not to improve defence, but to increase the EU's position. One could easily see the French saying that some operation had to be done by the new structures and vetoing any proposals to do it through Nato."

He criticised the decision to go ahead with the meeting now: "The timing could not have been worse. It comes when the United States is already angry with some European countries over Iraq."

Europeans versus Europeans

The argument on European defence divides not just Europeans and Americans but Europeans themselves.

At a meeting of Nato ambassadors in the North Atlantic Council in Brussels on Wednesday, the Belgian ambassador gave what one critical European called a "tortuous, agonized and defensive" account of what was being proposed.

One hostile ambassador, presumably the British in view of the Shakespeare reference, said of the Belgian argument that Nato was not being undermined: "Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much."

'A false choice'

The British Prime Minister Tony Blair scoffed at the meeting because only four EU members attended and eleven did not.

Nevertheless the Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has felt it necessary to declare again that it is "an entirely false choice" for Britain to be forced to decide between a future with the United States or a future in Europe.

Formally, Nato itself confined its comments to saying that it welcomed any strengthening of European capabilities.

But it asked whether the Brussels announcement actually does that because no new resources are proposed.

And it questioned whether it also duplicates existing structures. That, for Nato, was quite a critical comment.

Amusement

In the Foreign Office in London, there was lofty amusement about the value of the Luxembourg reconnaissance unit which is to be attached to the existing Franco-German brigade

Some diplomats are much more dismissive of the initiative because they feel that it is primarily political in nature and pays no attention to military realities.

One called the Belgian armed forces "completely useless".

"Their morale is even lower than that of the Germans," he stated.

In the Foreign Office in London, there was lofty amusement about the value of the Luxembourg reconnaissance unit which is to be attached to the existing Franco-German brigade.

Russian roadblock

Add this row to the fall-out from Iraq and you have the beginnings already of the "divisions that we wanted to get rid of when the Cold War finished" feared by Tony Blair in remarks on Monday.

Mr Blair himself had personal experience of these divisions when he ran into a Russian roadblock during his talks with President Putin on Tuesday.

Russia is refusing to unblock United Nations sanctions on Iraq until UN inspectors formally complete their searches for weapons of mass destruction. The US and UK want sanctions removed immediately.

The meeting in Brussels on Tuesday may in the end have been more symbolic than practical in pointing the way towards the European Union as the basis of European defence, but it is a sign that the debate is developing. So are the divisions.