DEFENCE: INFORMAL EU DEFENCE MINISTERIAL MARKS TIME.

He said after the meeting that Ministers agreed to hold another capability conference during the Belgian Presidency - probably in November. They also agreed on the need to define quickly the details of a review mechanism - with "a structure that allows full transparency and coherence between EU and NATO processes, while ensuring the EU's autonomous decision-making", he said. The broad view among Member States is that the review mechanism has to be designed in a way that will avoid any duplication in the collection and the transmission of information on national contributions to the defence planning in the EU and in NATO. In concrete terms, it needs to check on how appropriate the Member States' capability commitments - the men and tanks and planes - would be for the types of missions foreseen. The Swedish Presidency hopes to have an analysis completed by June of the offers made by Member States in November 2000.There was no good news to report on any breakthrough in the stand-off with Turkey over access to NATO planning assets. On the direction that future developments might take, ministers are keeping the options open. They spoke of keeping the European crisis management development "an open project" - both for the non-EU European NATO-members and the EU candidate countries, and for a wider range of contacts.Speaking at a meeting on public opinion and European security policy in Brussels on 4 April, Dr von Sydow had already indicated his personal view on this: "We should also prepare the way in which participation in crisis management missions is to be effected when it is a question of countries that are not members of either the EU or NATO". After the Ministerial meeting on 6 April, he went further: "We agreed on the importance of involving Russia in the dialogue on the European Security Architecture and to benefit from the constructive Russian attitude towards the ESDP", he said. He said he plans a personal ad hoc-meeting for the Swedish Presidency with the Russian Defence Minister early this summer, to exchange views in a informal framework, on practical issues such as co-operation and integration of...