Brussels — Soldiers from seven Eastern European countries raised their national flags outside NATO headquarters Friday in a ceremony marking the biggest expansion of the alliance in its 55-year history.
Foreign ministers from Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Latvia and Estonia joined their colleagues from the other 19 allies as a NATO honour guard played the newcomers' national anthems.
“From now on, 26 allies will be joined in a commitment to defend each other's security and territorial integrity,” NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said. “This is the strongest, most solemn commitment nations can undertake.”
NATO's expansion will be followed in a month by the European Union's absorption of 10 new members, twin moves seen as representing an end to decades of Cold War division in Europe.
The Romanian flag is raised Friday during a ceremony in Brussels to mark the entry of six former communist countries into NATO. (Thierry Monasse/AFP)
“This morning a dream has been fulfilled. … This is truly a moment to be enjoyed like no other,” Latvian Foreign Minister Rihards Piks said. “Now Latvia stands shoulder to shoulder with 25 other nations … sharing values and ideas that unite us.”
The seven new NATO members have been under the alliance's collective defence umbrella since they formally joined on Monday in a ceremony in Washington.
In a highly symbolic move, Belgium immediately dispatched four F-16 fighters to Lithuania to provide air policing over the three Baltic states, who were left without their own fighter planes when they broke from the Soviet Union in 1991.
That deployment has upset Russia, which has been uneasy about the eastward shift of its old Cold War foe. Moscow has warned that further NATO troop movements into the former Soviet satellites would harm relations.
Alliance diplomats, however, played down fears of new tension with Moscow, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was to take part with NATO in talks later Friday.
The allies are expected to discuss the search for troops to meet peacekeeping commitments in Afghanistan, divisions over the U.S.-led war in Iraq and engaging countries of the Middle East.
They are likely to stress their determination to expand peacekeeping operations in Afghanistan beyond the capital, Kabul, despite their reluctance so far to commit the necessary troops.
Diplomats acknowledge that shortfalls in troops and equipment continue to delay plans to set up military teams in five northern Afghan towns. But they said NATO plans to have the teams operating by late June.
The ministers also will try to flesh out plans for deepening NATO's outreach program with North African and Mediterranean countries to help with military reform and increase counterterrorism co-operation.
No major decisions were expected Friday on Iraq since France, Germany and others were insisting on a new United Nations resolution and a sovereign Iraq government before agreeing on a wider NATO role there.
However, 17 NATO members already have troops in Iraq and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell is expected to discuss developments in the wake of a decision by Spain's incoming government's to pull its 1,300 troops out of Iraq.
Spain will be represented at the meeting by the outgoing conservative government, which was defeated in national elections just days after last month's terrorist bombings in Madrid.
In response to those bombings, which killed 191 people, NATO ministers were expected to pledge closer co-operation in fighting terrorism and willingness to help Greece provide security for this summer's Olympics.
