Monday's announcement by US President George W. Bush is also not good news for NATO, the transatlantic alliance still battling to heal deep divisions triggered by last year's Iraq war, they said.

European Union heavyweight Germany will bear the brunt of the biggest US reorganisation in 50 years, with about 30,000 troops due to go home by the end of the decade, while Britain and Italy are also likely to be affected.

Washington, whose forces are hugely stretched in Iraq and Afghanistan, says its huge military presence in Europe is no longer justified more than a decade after the end of the Cold War.

The decision "should focus minds in London, Paris and Berlin about the EU's role in global security policy," former NATO top commander Joseph Ralston and ex-German chief of staff Klaus Naumann wrote in the Financial Times.

While no crisis is imminent, Europe is quite aware that it would struggle to cope with another conflict like those which wracked the Balkans for much of the 1990s.

"If there were any future Kosovos in and around Europe, the Europeans would have to look after themselves," said Daniel Keohane of the Centre for European Reform. "Certainly the Europeans will have to think in more autonomous terms about looking after their own security."

The EU has long been divided over calls to boost defence cooperation, with key member states reluctant to cede control of a policy area seen as central to national sovereignty.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who is in charge of the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), has hailed recent progress including notably an EU peacekeeping force sent to the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the planned EU takeover of a NATO force in Bosnia at the end of the year.

Last December the EU also agreed to set up a joint defence agency charged with boosting the military capabilities of the 25-member bloc, as well as plans for rapid-reaction "battle groups" to be deployed to global hot spots by

But Solana's office was reluctant to comment on the US announcement Tuesday, saying it was a question for European governments. "This is an issue that involves (EU) member states, even if there is some cooperation," said an aide.

Analysts are sceptical that the EU will forge deeper defence cooperation anytime soon.

Timothy Garden of the London-based Royal Institute of International Affairs said there was "an overwhelming case for Europe to get its act together in the one field that it's not good at," namely its "hopeless" common foreign policy.

"Whether the gradual realization that we can't always hold on to the American comfort blanket will make it easier, I don't know," he added.

Meanwhile the North Atlantic Treaty Organization played down the significance of the US move, saying it was logical not to want to maintain huge land forces in Europe so long after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

"It's not a surprise. The only news is the timetable," said a NATO source on condition of anonymity, adding: "We don't welcome (it), we know about it."

The German government sought to play down the significance of the US move. But an opposition spokesman said Washington was "withdrawing from part of its responsibilities in NATO," and thereby "endangering security in Europe."

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