FRANCE OBJECTS TO NATO PLAN

NATO officials are considering forming closer links with non-members like Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Sweden and even Japan:

Nato’s James Appathurai said: “It makes sense to consider making this community stronger. We need as many countries as possible that share our values and have effective forces on the same team to face all the challenges we are seeing in places such as Afghanistan.”

Such a move makes sense but not all NATO members are happy about it:

However, this plan has run into opposition from France, which sees the move as a gambit to bring in countries more likely to see strategic issues from Washington's point of view.

It's just the French being... French.