Avignon, France  - The European Union must close ranks with the United States if the two powers are to protect their global influence, EU foreign ministers are set to say on Friday.

At an informal meeting in the French city of Avignon, the foreign ministers of the EU's 27 member states are due to discuss how they would like to cooperate with the next US president to solve questions of global security such as climate change and the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, officials told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Cooperation is good, but the bloc must work with the successor to US President George W Bush to resolve disputes over issues such as the human-rights implications of the US "war on terror" and US plans to site missile defences in Europe, officials said.

Ministers are also set to discuss with the EU's top foreign-policy figure, Javier Solana, how the bloc should update its common security strategy - a document written in December 2003.

The strategy needs to be "adapted to new realities," highlighting the increased importance of questions such as energy security, nuclear proliferation, climate change and the resurgence of conflict in the South Caucasus, EU diplomats said.

Those are all questions which the EU can best solve in the framework of international fora such as the UN and WTO - making US support a key objective of European policies.

The debate over the Caucasus promises to be particularly lively, as the EU is still divided over the August outbreak of war between Georgia and Russia - a conflict in which the US acted as Georgia's ally, while the EU played the role of mediator between the sides.

Ministers are officially scheduled to turn to the question of EU relations with the two combatants on Saturday, ahead of a top-level European visit to Moscow on Monday.

That is a last-minute change from the original agenda, which had been to discuss the Russian-Georgian war on Friday and the US relationship on Saturday.

Officials in the French government, which is hosting the summit as current holder of the EU's rotating presidency, would not comment on why the change had been made. (dpa)