Britain is urging the US to accept offers made by other EU allies to contribute to the campaign in Afghanistan, it emerged on Monday after a row about Sun-day's invitation-only talks involving the French and the Germans, Spain, the Netherlands, Italy and Belgium at the British prime minister's official residence in Downing Street, London.
With smaller EU member states angry at being excluded from the meeting, diplomats said Tony Blair would encourage President George W. Bush to respond positively to Spain and others when they met yesterday.
Blair, fresh from his controversial trip to the Middle East last week, will also underline the need for more intensive US involvement in attempts to curb Israeli-Palestinian violence. The French president, Jacques Chirac, was due to deliver a similar message to the White House yesterday.
Italy's offer of troops, ships, combat aircraft and specialist units has been accepted, but details need to be worked out.
Blair -- increasingly the key middleman between the EU and the US -- on Monday sought to repair any damage caused by the meeting by phoning the European commission president, Romano Prodi, though he did not feel snubbed, aides said.
But at a meeting of EU ambassadors, Portugal and Greece, as well as neutrals Sweden, Finland and Ireland, expressed reservations about the talks, which covered the Middle East, the future of Afghanistan, and strictly military issues. "People were speaking very frankly," said one diplomat.
British sources were unrepentant about the format, which initially involved only Chirac, the French prime minister, Lionel Jospin, and the German chancellor, Gerhard Schroder, but was hastily extended to include prime ministers Jose-Maria Aznar of Spain, Wim Kok of the Netherlands, Silvio Berluscy, and Guy Verhofstadt of Belgium.
"You can't ban any EU meeting on the scale between two and 15 [member states]; it's not realistic," an official said. "There's always going to be someone who is upset, so you just have to be tough."
Sunday's dinner was originally designed to be a replay of talks two weeks ago when Blair, Chirac and Schroder met on the eve of the EU's Ghent summit. Then there were furious complaints from Italy and Spain, which consider themselves in the EU big league, so Berlusconi and Aznar were eventually also invited on Sunday.
Another last-minute invitee was Kok, who pointed out that Dutch military personnel were already working at the US military command in Tampa, Florida. He was said to have been so angry at being excluded that he had phoned Blair personally to complain.
Belgium's Verhofstadt was asked because he is running the EU's rotating presidency. But Brussels sources said the invitation had come so late -- on Sunday lunchtime -- that he had considered declining, and had accepted only after consulting non-invitees.
Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief and main Middle East envoy, was also there and reported back to EU ambassadors yesterday.
Diplomats said Blair wanted to persuade Bush of the need to accept military help to cement alliance solidarity.
Portugal was especially angry about Sunday's meeting: "Encounters of this kind prejudice the creation of a consensus in the international alliance against terrorism," said an aide to the prime minister, Antonio Guterres.
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