Iraq tops Bush agenda at Nato

President Bush heads to a Nato summit in Prague today with the burden of European disagreement over Iraq at least temporarily lifted and the freedom to focus on the U.S. priorities for expanding and refashioning the aging alliance.

"Of course Iraq is going to come up," said a senior administration official. "It's topic number one and we're not going to run from it." But tentative plans for Bush to deliver a speech on the need to get tough with Iraqi President Saddam Hussain were scrapped after the recent unanimous United Nations vote for new weapons inspections.

"We would be happy with a strong statement of (Nato) political support" for strict enforcement of the new UN resolution, the official said. "If we were still wrangling in New York, it would be a lot harder."

The resolution calls for uncompromising new inspections and destruction of Iraq's programmes making weapons of mass destruction, and pledges to consider "serious consequences," including military action, if Baghdad does not cooperate.

Bush's major address during the five-day trip, delivered to a student forum on Wednesday, will focus on "his vision of a Europe whole, free and at peace," White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said Friday.

"I expect that we will hear from Nato partners what they are prepared to do and what they can do" in the event of military action against Iraq, Rice said. "But that's not the purpose of this summit."

The two-day Prague meeting will "celebrate an historic moment for Nato , which is the expansion of Nato into territories that I think nobody ever thought Nato would expand into," she said.

Seven new countries are expected to be approved for membership at the summit, two of which - Lithuania and Romania - Bush will visit before returning to Washington next weekend.

Other nations expecting to receive invitations are Latvia, Estonia, Slovenia, Slovakia and Bulgaria.

The expansion will be Nato's second, following admission in 1999 of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic; formal induction requires individual ratification in each of the current 19 member states and will take about two years.

In addition to approving the expansion, the administration is also looking for Nato leaders to endorse establishment of a joint 20,000 troop rapid deployment force for combat operations around the world proposed earlier this year by Defence Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, and agreement on new tasks and a command structure to make the alliance better able to respond to the global terrorist threat.

But while it will not have a formal place in the proceedings, Iraq will be hovering over the Nato deliberations. "Iraq is typical of the most important example of the kind of threat that Nato will face in the future," Rice said. "So it would be odd if this were not an issue at the summit."

Bush will meet with French President Jacques Chirac, who led UN Security Council opposition to an initial U.S.-proposed Iraq resolution that was later modified to remove what France and others considered automatic triggers the United States might use to launch an invasion without specific council authorisation.

He will also meet with Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer. Turkish assistance is considered vital to any U.S. military action in Iraq, and Bush wants to reach out to Turkey's newly-elected Islamic-based government.

Bush will not meet separately with German President Gerhard Schroeder, the Nato leader most adamantly opposed to a military attack.

Schroeder's pledge that Germany would not participate in any assault on Iraq, with or without UN backing, put relations with Washington in a deep freeze from which they have only partially thawed.

"I'm sure they will see each other at Nato," Rice said of Bush and Schroeder, noting that the two recently spoke by telephone. "Look," she said, "the relationship with Germany is very important and it will work and continue to work to the benefit of both countries".

The administration has begun to point out Germany's cooperation in the anti-terrorism campaign, and scheduled takeover of leadership of the international force in of Afghanistan.