"Taking into account the long term stability in the Western Balkans and acknowledging the progress made so far by Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia, we have today invited these countries to join Partnership for Peace," NATO leaders said in a final declaration of the Riga event.
The alliance also calls on Serbia and Bosnia to fully cooperate with the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), adding that it would closely monitor the two countries' efforts in this regard.
So far, NATO has made the entry of Serbia and Bosnia into the Partnership for Peace programme conditional on their cooperation with the UN war crimes tribunal, and the United States, Great Britain and the Netherlands have particularly insisted on this requirement.
The tribunal's Chief Prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, immediately expressed surprise and regret at the summit's decision.
"The prosecutor is very surprised by the decision. She regrets that it was made, that NATO changed its position because it looks like a reward for not fully cooperating with the prosecutor," her spokesman, Anton Nikiforov, was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying in The Hague on Wednesday,
According to Reuters, Del Ponte has given Montenegro, a new state which broke from Serbia after a referendum this year, a clean bill of health.