A senior aide to US President-elect George W. Bush attacked plans for a European defense force, describing them as "a dagger pointed at NATO's heart" the Sunday Times reported in London.
Defense specialist John Bolton said relations with Britain would have to be reassessed because of the proposals.
"We would have to pose the stark question: are you with us or with them?" Bolton said Saturday.
Unless NATO and the European Union worked together, the United States would have to deny Britain access to intelligence, he added.
Bolton has been tipped as a possible deputy to retired general Colin Powell, whom Bush appointed secretary of state, said The Sunday Times.
The paper also quoted Arizona senator Jon Kyl, a close friend of Bush as saying: "This force cannot exist outside Nato."
The comments were the latest in a series of warnings from the United States over the European plans, first from the outgoing administration and now politicians close to the incoming team.
On December 5, US Defense Secretary William Cohen bluntly warned that NATO would become a "relic of the past" if the EU set up a competing defense structure while failing to live up to their commitments to the alliance.
US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, while backing the idea of a force, stressed that it should not be outside NATO.
"It is very important that there .. not be a decoupling of the US from Europe," she said Wednesday.
At last weekend's EU summit in Nice, southern France, Britain forced France to back off from a description of the defense force that suggested it might enjoy some autonomy from NATO.
British politicians have been working hard to eliminate this element of the new proposals.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair was publicly irritated by remarks French President Jacques Chirac earlier this month that the new rapid reaction force, to be operational by 2003, should have a degree of autonomy from NATO -- LONDON (AFP)
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