国际英语新闻：Britain, France sign military cooperation treaties

Britain and France agreed to form a British-French carrier group, rotating the carrier between the British ship and the French ship, and to fly each other's planes from the carriers. This will require a change to British carrier designs.

Cameron said the treaty would see British and French armed forces "cooperating more closely than ever before". He described Britain and France as "natural partners", and that in a period of budget cutbacks cooperation would allow both nations to "expand our sovereign capability, even at a time when resources are tight".

He said Britain and France, the third and fourth largest military spenders in the world, showed a "willingness and a capability" to play a role on the global stage.

The treaty was "based on pragmatism, not just sentiment", said Cameron, who added that the treaty would be welcomed by the United States, which is Britain's global strategic partner, as it represented European nations cooperating on military issues.

The treaty was "about practical, hard-headed cooperation between two sovereign nations," said Cameron, who was keen to emphasis that neither nation was giving up sovereignty over its armed forces. "Britain and France, are and will always remain sovereign nations able to deploy armed forces independently."

France had been part of NATO but its troops had been separate from NATO's command structure for more than 40 years, when Sarkozy brought France back fully into NATO in 2009, and Cameron praised this move.