By David Brunnstrom
BRUSSELS, Dec 12 (Reuters) - European Union leaders on Friday adopted goals on expanding military capabilities to respond to crises, even after failing to meet a U.N. plea for an emergency force for Congo.
A statement agreed at a summit of the 27 EU states in Brussels repeated a goal of being able to deploy a force of 60,000 to a major crisis within 60 days.
The bloc should also be able to plan and conduct more than 20 missions simultaneously, including stabilisation and reconstruction and rapid response operations, it said.
However, the timeframe for the force first mooted in 1999, which has slipped from 2003 to 2010, is now stated vaguely as "in the years ahead".
The EU hopes to become a bigger global player, but this aim has been hobbled by an inability to present a united political response, and shortfalls in equipment and interoperability that the statement said must be corrected.
It said the moves were a prerequisite for the EU to assume in "a credible and effective manner" its responsibilities in a renewed Euro-Atlantic partnership.
On Thursday, EU foreign ministers were unable to agree on a response to a request by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon for a "bridging force" to help a 17,000-strong U.N. mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo known by the French acronym MONUC.
The U.N. force has been unable to contain increased violence in eastern Congo between the forces of renegade General Laurent Nkunda and pro-government militias. An estimated 250,000 people have been displaced by the violence in recent weeks.
In the Congolese capital Kinshasa, EU Development and Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Louis Michel said the increasingly heated debate over sending EU troops should not be allowed to paralyse diplomatic efforts to end the conflict.
"We need to focus on the diplomatic negotiations and we cannot force EU members to deliver troops," he told Reuters.
EU diplomats said Michel's position dealt a blow to those who backed the idea of urgently dispatching an EU force.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has championed efforts to boost EU military capabilities as EU president, also questioned whether the force was needed.
He said the Angolan army was ready to commit forces under a U.N. mandate and added: "Isn't it better to draw on regional forces, who are ready to go, rather than European forces?"
"MORAL RESPONSIBILITY"
However, Karel De Gucht, foreign minister of Belgium, Congo's former colonial power and an advocate of EU intervention, said the EU had "a moral responsibility".
He said he disagreed with Michel -- also Belgian -- who argued that sending a force may hurt talks.
"I don't share this view because it means putting all your hopes in the protagonists ... it's the wrong assessment."
He and other ministers questioned why the deployment should be a problem when the European Union had fast-response battle groups on standby -- one led by Britain, the other by Germany.
"What I find strange is that a couple of these battle groups only exist on paper and not in reality," de Gucht said. "The UK says 'we don't have troops', but they are leading the battle group, so who is leading these battle groups then?"
Britain has repeated its position favouring strengthening the existing U.N. force in Congo rather than a separate one.
"A single chain of command is always important," Foreign Secretary David Miliband told Reuters on Thursday. "EU members can contribute to MONUC and that's the first port of call."
(Additional reporting by Ingrid Melander and Yvonne Bell in Brussels, and Yves Boussen in Kinshasa; Editing by Katie Nguyen)