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NATO leaders in Prague for the two-day NATO summit have made a historic decision to invite seven former Eastern Bloc nations to join the alliance in a landmark expansion. The new members - Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia - will be admitted to the alliance in 2004. NATO Secretary General George Robertson called the invitation a "crucially important decision". The Czech President Vaclav Havel has welcomed the historic move:

"The alliance's decision to open itself once again to the new European democracies signifies that the unnatural division of Europe has come to an end in real terms and that the last surviving remnant of the Iron Curtain, that strange psychological wall that used to separate the old democracies from the post-communist ones, is finally breaking down."

NATO leaders have agreed to create a rapid Response Force which is expected to be used in global anti-terror missions and operations against so-called rogue states. In a statement, leaders of the 19 NATO states said the new force with land, sea and air power would have initial operating capability by 2004 and be fully operational by 2006. The statement did not say how many troops would be in the force but the figure of 20,000 had been proposed by the United States. NATO's Response Force (NRF) will consist of "a technologically advanced, flexible, deployable, interoperable and sustainable" elements, said the statement.

Riot police on Thursday rebuffed about 1,500 anti-war demonstrators who temporarily blocked access to the Congress Centre where dozens of presidents, ministers and military leaders were attending the NATO summit. No violence was reported, but at least three demonstrators were detained during the four-hour march through the streets of Prague. The demonstrators marched from nearby streets and squares towards Nuselsky Bridge leading to the Congress Centre. They stood chanting and waving banners for more than an hour across the span from the Congress Centre summit site.

The police, equipped with water cannons and riot gear, stood in front of the bridge until the protesters gave up and marched away. The demonstration was the largest since a coalition of groups called AntiNATO started protests on Tuesday, but far below organisers' expectations. They hoped 10,000 people would rally in Prague, but many would-be protesters from other European countries were turned away at the Czech border.

At a press conference in Prague, US President George W. Bush has urged Iraq's Saddam Hussein to comply with a UN resolution or face the consequences of military action. Speaking after a meeting with Czech President Vaclav Havel on Wednesday, Mr Bush said that Iraq was a threat to peace and indicated that Saddam Hussein could either comply or be disarmed by force. Mr Bush said that NATO allies would discuss the matter during the NATO summit in Prague, which gets underway Thursday. The US president said he will call upon NATO countries to help disarm Iraq if Saddam Hussein refuses to give up the arsenal of deadly weapons which the US says he has stockpiled.