(DEAUVILLE) - France strove Wednesday to give new impetus to plans to boost European Union defence capabilities by pushing its EU partners to commit to filling key military shortfalls.

At informal defence talks in Deauville, northern France, French Defence Minister Herve Morin urged his EU counterparts to pledge help in providing much needed air transport, helicopters and intelligence gathering capabilities.

"All this will give us real impetus ... with concrete and pragmatic projects: military capacity, a consciousness about a European (military) identity and reflection about our forces," he told reporters.

France, which holds the EU's rotating presidency, is expected in April to announce its intent to return fully into the NATO military alliance, but it has made the move conditional on Europe's defence capacities being strengthened.

And the talks in Deauville, over two days, could prove a litmus test of the 27 EU nations' willingness to live up to their lofty security ambitions.

The EU aims, by 2018, to be able to deploy if needed some 60,000 troops with air and naval support within 60 days, and for the mission to remain in operation for a year.

Drawing on EU and NATO equipment and personnel, it wants to be able to run two large security and reconstruction missions -- like the one in Bosnia -- for at least two years, as well as two smaller rapid reaction operations.

Further stretching already scarce resources, it aims to deploy humanitarian and surveillance missions, as well as almost a dozen police operations, some of them for a number of years.

But to achieve these goals, a number of critical shortfalls must be met.

Military experts have defined them as the capacity to transport forces into a theatre of conflict, mainly by air, deploy them once they have arrived, protect them and acquire intelligence.

A French official said he hoped EU nations would sign up to the list, drawn up in close consultation behind the scenes, before Paris's presidency ends in late December, and insisted that the projects on it were serious.

"This is not a wish list, or something hopeful destined for the best possible world, otherwise we would have a whole lot more to put on it," he told reporters.

Another French official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was important to goad the nations into contributing military assests at a European level as well as at NATO, whose most powerful member is the United States.

"There are a number of European countries that are never going to spend, that think only of national interests because they have been virtually anaethesised by the American military umbrella at NATO," he said.

"There are places like Africa, where NATO is not seen as a possible actor" but where the European Union can go, he added.

During their talks, the ministers will also take stock of the EU missions in Bosnia, which is likely to be scaled down or brought to an end, and Chad, which is scheduled to end in March as UN troops take over.

"It is useful that at some point European states send a signal to their citizens that when we launch a mission we are also capable of finishing it," Morin said, of the Althea operation in Bosnia, launched in 2004.

Althea numbers around 2,200 troops and is charged with military tasks under a peace deal that ended the 1992-1995 war, and a French official said it has essentially finished its job.

"We are going to look at the options, one of which could be to declare that the military tasks are over, and to think about some transition mechanism, either with civilians or a rapid reaction force that could deploy at any time should things deteriorate," he said.

Informal meeting of EU defence ministers

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