The contribution of new democracies to Euro-Atlantic security and the fight against international terrorism will be on the agenda at the meeting of NATO candidate members in the Boyana residency today.

Nine heads of state of aspiring NATO members, the alliance's secretary general George Robertson and the supreme allied commander in Europe, Gen. Joseph Ralston, will meet for the last time before the 2002 summit in Prague, where NATO is expected to decide on its expansion policy and possibly accept new members.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security advisor to former U.S. president Jimmy Carter and an internationally renowned political scientist, is one of the more notable participants. Yesterday, he was awarded the First Degree Stara Planina order by Bulgarian President Petar Stoyanov. The member countries of NATO will be represented by foreign affairs or defense ministers and deputy ministers.

Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania, Macedonia and Albania, also known as the Vilnius group, started their cooperation at the level of foreign ministers on May 19, 2000 at the Vilnius conference where they adopted a declaration encouraging NATO's enlargement policy. Croatia later joined. A meeting in Bratislava followed.

Today, the Vilnius group meeting in Sofia, which is being held at an unprecedented senior level, will produce a declaration similar to the first two, furthering the alliance's policy for accepting new members. The summit is unique because it is the first event of such importance taking place after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. In this light, delegates will discuss the role of their countries in the struggle against terrorism.

Earlier this week, the Croatian President Stjepan Mesic said, in an interview for Reuters, that at the Sofia summit he will present an initiative for fighting "the global evil of terrorism" by exchange of information between intelligence services and tightened security measures.

Mesic pointed out that the power and the military capabilities of a country are not a factor in this struggle and that all countries, small and large, should take part in it. "It's that simple - either you fight against terrorism, or you support it," he told Reuters.

The meeting is taking place under extra tight security, said Gen. Dimitar Vladimirov, chief of the National Security Service. Access to the VIP zone, at the Sofia airport and the Hilton, Radisson, Sheraton and Kempinski hotels will be restricted. Street traffic will only be stopped for a few minutes while the motorcades of the delegates pass and inconvenience to Sofians will be minimized, Vladimirov said.