The foreign ministers of the three nations will hand the ratification documents to U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at a ceremony in Independence, in the U.S. state of Missouri.

Later on march 12 the flags of the three newcomers will be hoisted outside the NATO headquarters in Brussels as part of a ceremony attended by the prime ministers of the three nations.

As new members Prague, Warsaw and Budapest will participate in the NATO summit in Washington slated for April 24. The Czech foreign ministry was informed about the date in a message from the U.S. embassy here in Prague.

The three countries were asked join the Western alliance during NATO's Madrid conference in July 1997.

NATO's Secretary General Javier Solana, who is due to visit Prague late in March, formally invited the three nations to join the club last month after all 16 NATO member countries had approved the eastward expansion of the Atlantic alliance.

The announcement about the admission date followed less than 24 hours after the defence ministers from Germany, France and Poland agreed on Friday that objections from Russia could not block NATO's further expansion after the military alliance admits new members in March.

Germany's Rudolf Scharping said during a meeting in the southern Polish city of Krakow that he could not accept a distinction made by Russia last week between countries whose NATO membership Moscow could accept and those it could not.

Russia, which has vocally protested against the expansion, is now trying to block another wave of NATO enlargement. It particularly objects to efforts by the Baltic states, the Soviet Union's former republics, to join the pact. 

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