NATO foreign ministers meet Wednesday with counterparts from seven north African and Middle Eastern countries in a drive to build closer ties with nations on the alliance's volatile southern and southeastern flanks. The talks with Israel and six Arab nations will be followed Thursday by the NATO ministers' regular year-end meeting which is likely to be dominated by discussions on alliance missions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Kosovo. Ministers also want to discuss the crisis in Ukraine with their Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, who will attend part of Thursday's meeting. It was not clear whether a separate meeting would be held with Ukraine's Foreign Minister Kostyantyn Gryshchenko. The dinner meeting on Wednesday will mark 10 years of NATO's "Mediterranean Dialogue" program with Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and Mauritania. It is the first time NATO will meet with them at such a high level. NATO is seeking to expand that low-level program to engage those nations in counter terrorism cooperation and broaden ties to include joint exercises, military training and help with defense reforms. "The time has come to hold out the hand of friendship, not only to eastern Europe, but also to our friends in North Africa and the Middle East," NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said last month on a visit to Algeria _ another first. On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell is expected to press European allies to come forward quickly with troops needed to expand NATO's peacekeeping operation in Afghanistan and its training mission in Iraq.
