Leaders from all three Baltic states today welcomed an endorsement from US President Mr George W. Bush of further NATO expansion, raising hopes they will be invited to join the alliance next year.
Speaking in the Polish capital Warsaw, Mr Bush said: "NATO should not calculate how little we can get away with, but how much we can do with regard to accepting new members."
He said the question was not if but when expansion would take place.
"We have heard all the encouragement we could have expected to hear from President Bush with regard to NATO expansion," Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga said.
"He confirmed our expectations with regard to the Prague 2002 summit in a clear, albeit symbolic, and unequivocal way."
Russia opposes NATO membership for Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia - countries forcibly annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940 and occupied for 50 years - something that would bring its Cold War-era enemy to its doorstep.
Lithuanian diplomats had said they were concerned Russia's objections might lead NATO to refuse the Baltic states entry, draw out their accession bids or offer them a watered-down version of membership.
Meanwhile the White House announced today that President Bush will meet British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair in England ahead of a G8 summit in Italy next month.
Mr Bush will have an audience with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican and will travel to Rome for talks with Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on the sidelines of the July 20-22 summit in Genoa, a spokesman said.
The US president arrived in Poland today on the fourth stop on his five-nation European tour that ends this weekend with a summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Slovenia.
AFP &