"We welcome the announcement" by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, said White House national security spokesman Gordon Johndroe.

France was a founding member of NATO but left the integrated command in 1966 when Charles de Gaulle rejected US dominance of the military alliance.

Stephen Hadley, President George W. Bush's national security adviser, said in April that Bush was in favor of France's return to the command and generally favored European partners boosting capacities for EU and NATO missions.

Hadley "made it very clear that the United States wants a strong partner in Europe, wants a strong EU partner, and that involves both more military capability for those countries, but also partnering NATO's military capability with EU civilian and political capabilities," Johndroe said.

State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said Sarkozy's announcement reflected "the important role that France is playing within the alliance and also the increasing cooperative efforts at integration between NATO and the European Union as it also seeks to develop its own security capabilities."

The announcement was made during a major speech on defense in which Sarkozy also said the armed forces would lose 54,000 posts to make way for a "massive investment" to develop state-of-the-art intelligence to counter terrorism.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said the reduction would not necessarily result in a less effective French military, but said Defense Secretary Robert Gates believed the NATO allies should generally spend more on defense.

"We do not believe there is necessarily a correlation between the size of one's military or department of defense and the effectiveness of that department," Morrell said, adding that budget constraints were always an issue.

But he said that Gates had said "time and time again when he meets our NATO allies that they need to spend more money on national defense."

"In order to have a robust defense, you need to invest in it," he said.

"It doesn't necessarily mean that the force needs to be large in size -- it can be smaller in size and supplemented by modern equipment."

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