SINTRA (Portugal), May 29: The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and Ukraine today agreed on a charter setting out terms for future security relations between the alliance and the former Soviet republic.

The accord, which will be formally signed at a NATO summit in Madrid on July 8-9, was the latest major development in the rapidly changing security landscape in Europe.

It came just two days after NATO and Russia buried their cold war enmity with a historic accord that clears the way for the alliance to start making in former Warsaw pact states this summer.

The accord with Ukraine sets out the broad principles on which NATO's relations with the former Soviet republic will be based and establishes a joint commission to enhance consultation between the two parties on security and other issues.

This will however be a lower-key forum than the permanent joint council to be established between NATO and Russia.

Ukraine, which last year gave up the nuclear weapons it inherited from the Soviet Union, has said it wants to become a full member of NATO but accepts this will not happen before NATO-Russia relations have moved on to much more stable basis.

In Kiev, a government official praised the charter but said it fell short of providing the specific, iron-clad security guarantees that Ukraine had sought from the alliance.

But ``all in all, this charter is a good document that gives us hope. Ukraine is finally recognised as being part of European security structures,'' said Andrei Fialko, head of the policy analysis office under President Leonid Kuchma.

The deal with Ukraine came as NATO foreign ministers, meeting here, kickstarted a final round of negotiations over which former Warsaw pact states will receive the first, highly coveted, invitations to join.

The Czech republic, Hungary and Poland are seen as certain to be asked to join at a special summit in Madrid on July 8-9. But a debate is raging over whether they should be accompanied by Romania and Slovenia.France and other southern European states are pushing hard for Romania. ``It is important that western alliance's enlargement is not exclusively to the north,'' said a French diplomat.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.