BRUSSELS: Nato foreign ministers on Thursday discuss possible membership invitations to Croatia, Albania and Macedonia as part of alliance efforts to nurture stability in the Balkans after Kosovo’s secession from Serbia.

Diplomats tip Croatia as most likely to win an invitation.

Question marks still hang over Albanian and Macedonia, with Macedonia facing a Greek threat to block its bid in a long-standing row over its name.

Any formal invitations will go out at a summit in April where alliance leaders may also signal a readiness to work on closer ties with other countries of the former Yugoslavia, notably Bosnia and Montenegro.

No such rapprochement is due with Serbia, at loggerheads with the West over Kosovo’s independence move last month. The alliance will instead reaffirm a longstanding policy that Nato is ready for closer ties whenever Serbia is.

“It is important how Nato is going to relate to the region in general,” Nato Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said in the run-up to Thursday’s meeting, which comes as analysts note growing Russian efforts to wield influence in the region.

Violent incidents in northern Kosovo and a growing boycott by local Serbs of Kosovo institutions have raised fears of a de facto partition of the Serb-dominated north from the rest of the overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian country.

Nato commanders have reinforced the alliance’s 16,000-plus security force and say the situation is under control for now.

Yet efforts to deepen Nato ties across the region have hit a potential stumbling block over the threat by alliance member Greece to block Macedonia’s entry in a row over its name.Greece rejects the name Macedonia, saying it implies territorial ambitions by its neighbour against its own northern province of Macedonia, birthplace of Alexander the Great.

While Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski has stressed that changing the name of his country is too high a price to pay for Nato membership, de Hoop Scheffer appealed to Macedonia during a trip to Athens on Monday to help settle the dispute.

If Greece makes good on its threat to block Macedonia’s bid, it could have knock-on effects for Albania, with some Nato capitals arguing that it would be better to also postpone any invitation to Albania so that Macedonia was not left behind.—Reuters