ROME -- European Commission President Romano Prodi urged members of the enlarged European Union to show tighter unity and stand up to the United States, in an interview published on Saturday.

"A more united Europe would win more respect and facilitate cooperation between the two sides of the Atlantic," he told the Italian daily La Repubblica.

"Enlargement without a political objective is good enough only for those who see Europe simply as a free trade zone," he added, commenting that Europe should develop a "true political personality" with a common foreign and defense policy.

"We cannot simply hand Europe responsibility for the treasury while leaving the portfolio for security with America," Prodi said.

On Wednesday, 10 countries signed accession treaties to join the EU in May 2004, taking total membership to 25 and creating the world's biggest economic zone with a population of 450 million.

Throughout the crisis over Iraq, "European foreign policy suffered from divisions between member states and from the skilful way the United States played the situation," Prodi said.

The EU was deeply split by the U.S.-British war that toppled Saddam, but the bloc appears to be coming together again over the best strategy for rebuilding the country.

Though it was "undeniable that the United States is a superpower," Prodi told the paper the EU should "try to offer the world alternative models, as Europe has done with the Kyoto Protocol, the International Criminal Tribunal or the euro".

Prodi acknowledged that some of the new EU states have strong ties to the United States on security issues, but he said the EU should still make its voice heard within NATO.

"Then we would truly have an (Atlantic) alliance built on two pillars: one European and one American," he said. "For that is the true NATO, rather than the one we have become accustomed to, which answers only to America."

Prodi argued that the European Union had become a real challenge to the United States since the introduction of the euro.

"For ten years, they ridiculed our efforts toward building a single currency. Now, the euro is a real currency, competing with the dollar on world markets and the Americans are waking up to Europe," he said.

Prodi also dismissed calls by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi for an enlarged Europe to eventually include Russia.

He said Russian leaders had told him "that it is not their intention to ask to join the European Union".

"Bulgaria and Romania are taking the necessary steps to become members in 2007. The union's doors could later be opened to Turkey, the republics of the former Yugoslavia and Albania. That is all, at least in the foreseeable future," Prodi said.