Cameron and Sarkozy hail UK-France defence treaties

A UK centre will develop nuclear testing technology while one in France carries it out and there are plans for a joint army expeditionary force.

After signing the treaties with Nicolas Sarkozy, the UK PM said it would make citizens safer and would save money.

But Labour suggested it could limit the UK’s ability to act independently.

After he and French President Nicolas Sarkozy signed the two treaties, Cameron said: “Today we open a new chapter in a long history of co-operation on defence and security between Britain and France.”

He said it was not about a European army or about sharing nuclear weapons.

“Britain and France are, and will always remain, sovereign nations, able to deploy our armed forces independently and in our national interest when we choose to do so.”

But Cameron said the vast bulk of Britain’s military operations over the past few decades had been carried out with allies and said co-operating on testing nuclear warheads would save millions of pounds.

The plan to share aircraft carriers looks as if it will be quite ambitious. David Cameron talked of developing an “integrated strike force” to be used in jointly agreed operations.

At the same time both sides are saying they will have a veto on the use of their carrier. This raises the “South Atlantic question”.

What would happen, for example, if Britain needed the only available carrier, which happened to be the French one, to defend some threat to the Falklands? And the same for the French with the British carrier of course.

President Nicolas Sarkozy evaded a query on this, saying that France would not “twiddle its thumbs”, though that is precisely what it did in 1982.

It is perhaps a mark of the confidence between the two countries that they do not think this will be a real problem.

“It is about defending our national interest. It is about practical, hard-headed co-operation between two sovereign countries.”

He added that one treaty would commit the two countries’ forces to work “more closely than ever before” while the other - to last 50 years - would increase co-operation on “nuclear safety”.

The nuclear treaty will establish a centre in the UK to develop testing technology and another one in France to carry out the testing. Warheads will be tested by technical means to ensure their safety and effectiveness, without having to test them by explosion.

The other treaty will allow the setting up of a “combined joint expeditionary force”, thought to involve a brigade of about 5,000 soldiers from each side, which will operate under one military commander to be chosen at the time.

The UK and France have also agreed to keep at least one aircraft carrier at sea between them at any one time. Each will be able to use the other’s carrier in some form, certainly for training and possibly operations.

Sarkozy described the agreement as “unprecedented”. He said the treaties would deliver “a truly integrated aircraft carrier group” but dismissed suggestion that they would infringe on either country’s sovereignty.

The two leaders faced questions about what would happen if one country backed a military operation and the other did not. Cameron said there would have to be “political agreement” for the joint taskforce to be deployed.

Sarkozy said it would be unlikely that Britain would face a crisis so great that it needed an aircraft carrier without France being affected: “If you, my British friends, have to face a major crisis, could you imagine France simply sitting there, its arms crossed, saying that it’s none of our business?”