Nato leaders promised Ukraine and Georgia yesterday they would one day join the Western defence alliance after rebuffing US demands to put the former Soviet republics on an immediate path to membership.
Germany, France and smaller Nato states withstood pressure from US President George W. Bush to offer the two countries a Membership Action Plan (MAP), a first step towards entry, saying neither was ready and such a move would risk provoking Russia. But Nato leaders softened the blow by making a vaguer pledge to invite the two to join the alliance at some point in the future and saying former Cold War foe Moscow should have no influence on membership decisions.
"We agreed today that these countries will become members of Nato," Nato Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told a news conference, reading from a communique agreed at a summit of the pact's 26 leaders in Bucharest.
"That is quite something," he added.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko called the Nato move historic. "This is our victory," he told reporters. Georgian Foreign Minister David Bakradze called it a "historic breakthrough" for his country.
On other enlargement decisions, Macedonia's request for an invitation to join was blocked by Greece in a name row but Albania and Croatia won invitations to become members. Bosnia and Montenegro were awarded closer ties.
A new era beckoned for the alliance after French President Nicolas Sarkozy pledged to take a decision soon on France's full reintegration into the Nato military structures it left in 1966.
Mr Sarkozy gave cautious support to US plans to build a missile defence shield in Europe and also confirmed France would add 700 extra soldiers to Afghanistan as part of a wider force reshuffle to avert a threatened Canadian withdrawal.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the reinforcement meant Canada's conditions were fulfilled to keep its 2,500 troops in the violent south despite public pressure for a pullout. Mr Bush did not specifically refer to his failure at his farewell summit to push Ukraine's and Georgia's MAP bids through but he said Nato must continue to be ready to enlargement.
"Nato's door must remain open to other nations in Europe that share our love for liberty," he said in a speech.
Nato foreign ministers will review progress on the applications of Ukraine and Georgia at a meeting in December.
In a letter to the leaders of Georgia's rebel regions, Russian President Vladimir Putin noted Georgia's "accelerated Euro-Atlantic integration" and assured breakaway South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions of his support.
Public support for Nato is barely 30 per cent in Ukraine and Georgia does not control all of its territory because of frozen conflicts with the Russian-backed separatists.
Mr Putin arrived in Bucharest last night for talks with his Nato counterparts today. He steps down in May and hands power to protége Dmitry Medvedev.
Macedonia was told an invitation could be issued by ambassadors as soon as a "mutually acceptable solution" to the name issue was found, Nato states agreed in a communique.
"This is a huge disappointment. We have been told we have done everything we should have done in terms of reforms and military contributions. We are being punished because we are Macedonians," government spokesman Nikola Dimitrov said, adding the move "goes against stability in the Balkans".
Greece objects to use of the name Macedonia because this is the name of Greece's most northerly province.
In a long-awaited announcement, Mr Sarkozy told other leaders he wanted to push ahead with his aim of returning France to the integrated military command from which General Charles de Gaulle withdrew four decades ago.
"I reaffirm here France's determination to pursue the process of renovating its relations with Nato," he said.
Paris has remained a big contributor to Nato operations but the step would be a potent symbol of what Washington sees as a new rapprochement with France on security matters.
A senior US official told reporters the final summit communique would "recognise the substantive contribution to the protection of the allies" from a planned US missile shield based in eastern Europe.
That was the message Washington had sought from the summit after it became clear that allies would not go as far as taking procurement decisions on a possible Nato add-on system to cover those parts of southeast Europe not under its umbrella.