SOFIA, March 7 (Xinhua) -- Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ivailo Kalfin has said that Bulgaria's principle position was that NATO's expansion was strategically important for the peace and security in the Balkans, local Sofia News Agency reported Friday.

    Kalfin made the remarks at an informal meeting of the NATO Council in the Pact's headquarters in the Belgian capital of Brussels on Thursday.

    The Brussels meeting of the North Atlantic Alliance serves as preparation of the April NATO Summit in the Romanian capital Bucharest.

    During the forum the foreign ministers of the NATO member states discussed the further enlargement of the pact especially with respect to the Adriatic troika of Albania, Croatia and Macedonia, which are expected to be invited to join the alliance in Bucharest.

    Kalfin said that all of the three Adriatic states had met the technical criteria for joining NATO but that Croatia was in the best position.

    He added that other topics on the agenda were the NATO missions in Afghanistan and Kosovo, NATO's relations with Georgia and Ukraine, and the coordination between NATO and other international organizations such as the European Union (EU) with regard to international missions.

    On concerns over the diplomatic arguments between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) about the latter's name, which could lead to Greek veto of Macedonia's membership to NATO, Kalfin declared that Bulgaria would like to see all of its neighbors become members of NATO and the EU.

    Kalfin also said Greece had legal rights to dispute Macedonia's name as it saw Macedonia as a purely geographic region.