London - Britain and Italy sought yesterday to bolster moves toward a pan-European defence network with a call to learn the lessons of the Kosovo conflict and update Europe's military capability. At a joint news conference here, the British Prime Minister, Mr Blair, and his Italian counterpart, Mr Massimo D'Alema, urged EU states to set themselves targets to improve their own military muscle. The initiative seeks to build on a growing consensus in Europe that it has to have sufficient firepower to back up a common foreign policy.
Gaps in Europe's military capability were cruelly exposed by the conflict over Kosovo, which highlighted the extent to which European nations needed to rely on US firepower in their own backyard, they said. Mr Blair and Mr D'Alema, meeting in the first Anglo-Italian summit in four years, also promised to work together on common social and economic policies and to support reform of the European Commission.