BRUSSELS, Feb 3 (AFP) - Ukraine's new President Viktor Yushchenko will attend a NATO summit this month along with US President George W. Bush and other leaders of the 26-nation alliance, an official confirmed Thursday.
NATO ambassadors agreed to Kiev's request that Yushchenko meet the NATO leaders on the margins of the February 22 summit in Brussels, a spokesman said confirming information given by sources on Wednesday.
The meeting will be under the guise of regular NATO-Ukraine Commission talks, the spokesman said on condition of anonymity.
Bush will attend the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit on his first foreign trip since the start of his second term in the White House, in a bid to turn a new chapter with Europe after the 2003 Iraq war.
Yushchenko is not believed to be looking for any substantive decisions during the Brussels meeting, but wants a first personal contact with the heads of state including Bush, according to sources.
The pro-Western Yushchenko finally took office last month after a two-month political crisis in his ex-Soviet country following contested polls in November.
Although Ukraine is a member of NATO's Partnership for Peace program which develops closer links with many former Soviet republics, relations between the alliance and outgoing Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma were often chilly.
But Yushchenko has said he wants his country to one day join both NATO and the European Union, whose leaders will also meet Bush on February 22. Most EU states are also members of NATO.
02/03/2005 13:07 GMT - AFP