The Presidents of the ten NATO applicant countries arrive in Sofia for their first meeting on October 5. Ministers and other high-ranking officials will participate. NATO Secretary General George Robertson and General Joseph Ralston, the commander of NATO Allied Forces Europe will arrive for the meeting too. The Bulgarian President Petur Stoyanov will host the meeting. The Presidents of the other nine membership candidates of the so called Vilnius confirmed their participation, including President Valdas Adamkus of Lithuania, Vaira Vike-Freiberga of Latvia, Lennart Meri of Estonia, Rudolf Schuster of Slovakia, Milan Kucan of Slovenia, Ion Iliescu of Romania, Boris Trajkovski of Albania and Rexhep Meidani of Albania. The member states will be represented by the Foreign Ministers of Greece and Turkey, Georgios Papandreou and Ismail Cem, the Defense ministers of Luxembourg, the UK and the Czech Republic, Charles Goerens, Geoffrey Hoon and Jaroslav Tvrdik respectively. The other countries will be presented by Deputy Defense or Foreign Affairs Ministers. There will also be representatives of non-governmental organizations and outstanding people such as Zbigniew Brzezinski. Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister David-Akiva Avraam Peleg will observe the meeting. The Sofia summit will be the last meeting of the membership candidates before the 2002 summit in Prague. During the Prague summit, the Alliance is expected to take a decision on its enlargement. The participants in the Sofia forum will support the enlargement policy. Since the meeting in Sofia is the first forum at this level and of such a format after the September 11 terror attacks in the US, apart from calls for faster enlargement, the forum declaration will probably express the support of the involved countries in the fight against world terrorism. `The summit will be held under tight security,` General Vladimirov, Chief of National Security Services said. `This is the biggest forum Bulgaria organizes in he last several years and the recent events in the US call for extra security measures,` he added. Special security measures will be taken at the Sofia Airport. According to General Vladimirov, there are three potential dangers for the security of the summit: terrorists, anti-globalists and psychopaths. There is no information yet for planning of anti-globalist protests.

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