Times correspondent Roger Boyes reported the following from Germany: "Typical of the mood in Bonn is an article yesterday, by Professor Werner Kaltefleiter, an influential political scientist at Kiel University. He said Germans would surrender the Deutschmark more readily if other countries such as France and Britain 'Europeanised' their nuclear weapons. A single currency alone is not enough to give [a] united Europe international importance. European nuclear weapons are necessary for this."

More recently The Observer's Arnold Kemp wrote: "France and Germany have given new impetus to their controversial drive towards a European defence policy and have agreed to begin a dialogue on adding a nuclear dimension to it."

The British are understandably skeptical about this emphasis the Franco-German role. Talk abounds of a secret paper signed by Messrs. Kohl and Chirac in Nuremberg on December 7, 1996, and apparently leaked to Le Monde in Paris.

"The French have been campaigning to give Europeans regional command within NATO while allowing the United States, which they regard as increasingly overweening and unpredictable, to retain strategic control." (Sources: The Times, The Observer.)