NOORDWIJK, Sept 16: The European Union will launch a new force on Friday, designed to tackle post-conflict tensions that plague countries in the Balkans and other regions.

Defence ministers from five EU countries, meeting in the Dutch seaside resort of Noordwijk with ministers from all 25 EU states, will sign a declaration backing a force modelled on the Italian carabinieri or French gendarmes.

The new force, dubbed the "European gendarmerie", is not intended for conflict zones such as Iraq, but for countries recovering from war such as Bosnia, where the EU will take over peacekeeping from NATO in December.

Under the plan, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands will earmark a total of 800 personnel from their existing forces to be deployed inside a month for peacekeeping, maintaining public order and other policing duties.

Dutch Minister Henk Kamp said the force, with headquarters in Italy, should be functioning by 2005 but doubted whether it would be ready for actual missions next year. "If the force can be active and deployed in 2005, that would be rather swift," Kamp, whose country is holding the rotating presidency of the EU, told reporters.

STRETCHED CAPABILITIES: The two-day Noordwijk meeting will also focus on how the EU can make the most of stretched military capabilities with most European national defence budgets either stagnant or declining.

The EU as a whole spends less than half of what the United States spends on defence, but experts say its military capability amounts to only a tenth of what America gets for its money because of duplication and incompatible equipment.

Moreover with many European countries struggling to get their overall budget deficits lower, there is little prospect of a large boost to defence spending any time soon.

"We believe that more can be obtained and achieved with the money we have now," said Kemp, adding that his country would provide the meeting with suggestions on how to avoid duplication of national defence spending.

Ministers are due to hold the first steering board meeting of the newly formed European Defence Agency (EDA), whose role will be to help the bloc's states coordinate defence spending.

They will also discuss end-of-decade goals to establish up to nine rapid-reaction battle groups. Officials concede the plan to create units of 1,500 troops which can be deployed within 15 days is ambitious given the EU's limited capabilities. -Reuters