Associated Press

Leaders of the 10 countries applying for NATO membership pledged March 26 to continue to fight global terrorism and cooperate to bolster one another's bid to join the alliance.

"We have come together drawing lessons from our own history, that we can only achieve our common goals if we cooperate with one another," said a joint statement issued at the end of a two-day conference dubbed "the spring of new allies."
"We are committed to accelerating reforms in the firm belief that our work will lay the foundation for a lasting peace in Europe," it added.

The statement reaffirmed their commitment to fight global terrorism.

The participating countries also called for dialogue between the NATO and Russia, emphasizing that their membership in both the NATO and the EU would speed up the process of Russia's integration into the Europe-Atlantic community.

The Bucharest gathering was one of a series ahead of a November NATO summit in Prague, the Czech capital. The alliance is then expected to announce new members.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told a news conference Tuesday, "We're looking to the widest possible accession."

"We have not made any decisions yet about which countries should be invited to join NATO," he said. But "no country is excluded from consideration because of its history, its geography or the views of any outside power."
Leaders of the 10 formal NATO candidates -- Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Albania and Croatia -- took part in the meeting.