NATO SUMMIT: The closing stages of the NATO summit yesterday were marred by a breach of security in which the Secretary General of the alliance, Lord Robertson, was pelted with tomatoes by two Russian-speaking protesters during a news conference.
Just as the NATO chief finished taking questions, the pair stood up and threw two tomatoes at him, missing their target and hitting a back wall. Announcing that they were members of the National Bolshevik Party of Russia, they shouted that NATO was "worse than the Gestapo" and "the blood of all children is on you". One of them wore an armband depicting the communist hammer-and-sickle emblem.
The protesters were quickly removed by security personnel. There were unconfirmed reports that they were representatives of a left-wing Russian publication who had travelled as part of the press entourage accompanying their country's Foreign Minister, Mr Igor Ivanov.
The incident reflected the difficulty of ensuring total security at such a big event as the NATO summit, despite stringent checks at the conference centre by police and Czech officials. In addition, the city of Prague was virtually deserted.
President Bush left Prague before the Robertson incident for a meeting in St Petersburg with Russia's President Vladimir Putin. During 80 minutes of talks, Mr Bush was believed to have reassured Mr Putin that Russia had nothing to fear from NATO's decision to invite seven new members to join, including three former republics of the old Soviet Union, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.
Before leaving Prague, Mr Bush joined other political leaders at a meeting of the European-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC). After a few hours in Russian territory, Mr and Mrs Bush travelled to the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius. It was the first visit by a US president to the tiny Baltic state, which is among those invited to join NATO.
Mr Bush missed being involved in an embarrassing diplomatic incident in Prague, thanks to a clever protocol move by NATO officials. The Ukrainian President, Mr Leonid Kuchma, was not invited to the summit because of concerns over alleged smuggling of arms from his country to Iraq, but he turned up anyway and arrived at the EAPC meeting.
If the English alphabet had been followed, the seating order would have been: United Kingdom, Ukraine and the US, with Mr Bush and the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, seated either side of Mr Kuchma. However, the French alphabet was used instead, putting the Ukraine some distance from the US ("États-Unis") and the UK ("Royaume-Uni").
The Czech authorities denied a visa to the President of Belarus, Mr Alexander Lukashenko, because of alleged human rights abuses in his country.