Brussels, 01/10/2003 (Agence Europe) - According to Reuters, On Tuesday, Nicholas Burns, US Ambassador at NATO, expressed the opposition of the USA to the creation of a non-NATO European headquarters. The US would see this structure as a competitor to NATO. During a press conference he declared, "We could not support and we will not support the creation of an alternative EU military headquarters, whether it is in Tervueren or some other place in Brussels or elsewhere". The US Ambassador was referring to a proposal made at the summit on 29 April (presented by France, Belgium, Germany and Luxembourg) of creating a planning unit for autonomous EU military operations outside of Europe. The Four proposed Tervueren (near Brussels) to establish this EU "headquarters". Mr Burns thinks that such headquarters would duplicate jobs and would be, "needlessly costly and…in essence a contradiction to the Berlin Plus agreements". The US Ambassador consider NATO as the "pre-eminent security institution in Europe" and that, "time, attention and money ought to go into solidifying NATO-EU operations, not in creating institutions that in the long term could become competitive with the NATIO as opposed to co-operative". The American diplomat also indicated that most EU countries were opposed to setting up headquarters in Tervueren which has become, "a negative symbol in NATO-EU relations".