HAILING the creation of a new European security order, NATO today begins laying the ground work for expanding eastward into territory once ruled by its Cold War foe, the Warsaw Pact.
Foreign ministers who make up NATO's North Atlantic Council are meeting today at a luxury resort outside Lisbon, two days after Russian and alliance leaders signed a cooperation treaty in Paris.
It clears the way for NATO ministers to beg in hammering out plans to extend membership to former Soviet bloc nations - a move Russia had bitterly opposed but ultimately admitted it was powerless to stop.
The Sintra meeting will help us put the Cold War behind us, a NATO diplomat said. "It's where we start dealing with the nuts and bolts decisions of building a new European defence."
Meeting behind closed doors, ministers are expected to agree on a plan to invite Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic - the post communist nations that have evolved most rapidly toward democracy and market economies to join at a July 8th-9th summit in Madrid, NATO sources said. That would give NATO its first foot hold behind the former Iron Curtain.
Other former members of the Warsaw Pact the now disbanded military alliance, maintained by the old Soviet Union as a counter threat to NATO are also pressing for entry but will probably be told to wait, officials said.
Underlying the drive for NATO membership is the fear that Russia might some day abandon democratic reforms and threaten eastern Europe again, US officials acknowledge privately.
Mindful of the diplomatic sensitivities, NATO ministers are unlikely to make any public announcements about member ship decisions during the two day Sintra meeting.
Russia, which called expansion of the 16 member alliance a "strategic mistake", has warned that any, attempt to take in former Soviet republics such as Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia would be unacceptable. But a NATO spokesman insisted that the Baltic states which won their independence when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, would remain eligible for membership.
As a consolation prize, countries excluded from the first round of NATO enlargement, will be invited to forge closer military and political ties to the alliance through a strengthened Partnership For Peace, officials said.
NATO ministers expect to finalise the details tomorrow when they meet more than 20 foreign ministers from eastern Europe and former Soviet republic's now participating in cooperation programmes. The new grouping will be named the Euro Atlantic Partnership Council.
Now that expansion is all but guaranteed, the most heated debate among NATO foreign minister gathering in Sintra may centre on who pays the bill, a Spanish government official said. Cost estimates for bringing eastern Europe under the NATO umbrella run from a low of $35 billion to a high of more than $100 billion up to 2009.