WASHINGTON - Seven former Soviet bloc countries will be welcomed into NATO on Monday, as U.S. President George W. Bush meets with their leaders at the White House.
The western strategic alliance will grow to 26 on Friday when Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia attend their first NATO meeting in Brussels.
That's the largest expansion of the alliance since it was formed in 1949 to protect North America and western Europe from attack by the Soviet Union.
In Washington, Bush and NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer will greet all seven prime ministers on Monday at the White House.
Russia has expressed discomfort as the former Cold War foe of the Soviet Union expands eastward. Moscow has said it would have to respond to threats on its borders, and any western meddling in its region.
NATO has steadily extended itself eastward since the end of the Cold War, first to include Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. This latest expansion includes the Baltic states, which were once a part of the Soviet Union itself.
The United States has tried to minimize Moscow's irritation, in part by inviting it to attend Friday's meeting in Brussels.
Several of the new members are home to military and naval bases NATO could find strategically useful when dealing with situations in Asia and the Middle East.
Many observers, however, say what the alliance mainly wants from its new members are soldiers for peacekeeping missions and sparsely populated areas for training exercises.
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