National flags will be raised and anthems sung as the foreign ministers of Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia are feted at the first Brussels meeting of the now-26-nation alliance.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell will be among the dignitaries on hand to welcome the new members, which joined NATO on Monday by depositing their accession treaties in Washington to take the alliance up to Russia's borders.

Moscow has made no effort to hide its irritation at NATO's biggest expansion ever, especially at the inclusion of the Baltic states -- Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania -- which used to be part of the Soviet republic.

"If we feel that this expansion poses a threat to us that demands a military response, this response will follow," the Russian news agency Interfax quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Chizhov as warning Monday.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will get a chance to vent his country's ire at a regular session of the NATO-Russia Council on Friday.

Russia fears that NATO air defence patrols over the Baltic republics, announced by NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer this week, could be used to spy on its territory.

The Dutchman, who will go to Moscow in early April, also acknowledged there could be problems with Russia over the Conventional Forces in Europetreaty, which limits troop numbers in eastern Europe.

The Baltic republics and Slovenia were not independent states when the CFE was signed in 1989 and Lavrov says all four will now have to join the treaty, and keep to its guidelines until they do.

Robert Bradtke, the US State Department's deputy assistant secretary of state for Europe, said this week that Russia "will undoubtedly raise those concerns".

Bradtke added, however: "But I think this is a very positive sign that Russia understands, while it may not agree with the enlargement of NATO, that it wants to see its cooperation with NATO go forward."

The arrival of the seven new member states comes at a critical juncture for NATO, which was created in 1949 to defend western Europe from the Soviet Union but is now remoulding itself to confront new challenges.

In the wake of the March 11 attacks in Madrid, a NATO official said Friday's talks would look "at ways in which we can energize further our counter-terrorism efforts", specifically through sharing intelligence.

Already active in the Balkans and in Afghanistan, the alliance is also in talks about taking a formal peacekeeping role under the US-led occupation of Iraq. Individually, most of its members already have troops there.

With Powell in attendance, the NATO governments are expected to take up the Iraq issue again on Friday.

They are also set to debate how NATO, constrained by shortages of troops and equipment, can act on promises to broaden the deployment of its peacekeepers from the Afghan capital Kabul to the rest of the turbulent country.

Recent deadly unrest in the Serbian province of Kosovo, where NATO troops are also involved, will also be on the agenda.

And the US government wants to bring up a plan to extend to Middle Eastern countries the kind of cooperation established between NATO and former Soviet bloc nations under the "Partnership for Peace" programme.

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