ROME, April 12: NATO and Russia will hold a summit in Italy in May at which they hope to sign an agreement to form a joint council, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said on Friday.

Berlusconi said the agreement would come “as a first step towards the full integration” of the former Soviet Union into the alliance.

The Russia-NATO summit would take place “around the end of May”, Berlusconi told journalists in Rome.

Although the prime minister did not give a date or venue for the summit, the 19 NATO heads of state and Russian President Vladimir Putin are likely to meet “around May 28”, according to an Italian government source.

Berlusconi said he had been in contact with EU Commission President Romano Prodi and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar on Friday to examine the possibility of moving an EU-Russia summit in Moscow slated for that date. Spain currently holds the rotating EU presidency.

The summit will coincide with US President George W Bush’s visit to Europe in late May. Berlusconi said he had spoken to Bush by telephone on Friday.

“We have reached the conclusion of the initiative,”ld a news briefing. “This is excellent news after all the bad news we’ve been having.”

He said the NATO-Russia Council represented “the first, historic step towards the integration of Russia into NATO and into the western world.” He added that ropean Union.

On the Middle East, Berlusconi said that “international observers should be sent” to the region.—AFP