• GERMAN FOREIGN minister Guido Westerwelle has called for the EU to proceed with plans for a European army under the Lisbon Treaty, which he dubbed “the beginning and not the end” of a common security and defence policy.
• His remarks at the annual Munich Security Conference followed a call by Berlin’s defence minister Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg to end what he called Nato’s “absurd” practice of unanimous decision-making.
• Germany’s top diplomat received backing for his plan from his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, who called for a “single European military-political space” in which no one country’s security was sacrificed for another.

(So Germany calls for a Pan-European army, eerie considering the historical precedent of Nazi Germany’s plans….)