The prime minister has warned that President Chirac's vision for Europe is "dangerous and destabilising".

In the wake of bitter rows over Iraq, Tony Blair has told the Financial Times that Europe and America should find ways of bridging the divide that has opened up between them.

But he distanced himself from Washington hawks who suggest that the Paris government should be "punished" for its failure to back America in the build up to war.

"I am not really interested in talk about punishing countries, but I think there is an issue that we have to resolve here between America and Europe and within Europe about Europe's attitude to the transatlantic alliance.

"I don't want Europe setting itself up in opposition to America. I think it will be dangerous and destabilising," Blair tells the paper.

He warned that France's long term vision of a united Europe acting as a counterweight to the US would "very quickly develop into rival centres of power".

Such a development would mean "reawakening some of the problems that we had in the cold war with countries playing different centres of powers off each other".

Blair called for an open debate about how the two blocs can work to end their differences.

His comments came as a MORI poll for the FT found that 55 per cent of Britons regard France as the UK's least reliable ally, while 73 per cent feel that the US is the country's most reliable.