THE three European former communist states set to join NATO today face a range of huge challenges - but few more basic than the need to speak English.
Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary have all started intensive language training programs as part of their multi-million dollar programmes to update their armed forces.
Warsaw, Prague and Budapest were given the green-light to join the Atlantic Alliance at its summit in Madrid in July 1997. They join today in time for NATO's 50th birthday party in Washington next month. But for all three, the NATO entry fee is huge.
Warsaw calculates the overall bill will be $1.5 billion (£1.08 billion) spread over 15 years, and admits modernising its armed forces will pose serious financial problems at a time when Poland is also restructuring its economy to prepare for EU entry.
Czech military chiefs say 90 per cent of all new investment will be spent on replacing its mostly Soviet-built airforce over the next three years. Hungary, meanwhile, says NATO membership will cost it $29.5 million (£22 million) this year, while overall its NATO-related spending will rise to 1.8 per cent of its GDP.
But much remains to be done, experts agree, as they prepare to sign up this afternoon in a ceremony in Independence, Missouri.
The language issue was a serious problem, said Mr William Hopkinson, of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. "If you can't speak English you can't take part in military planning structures."
The three countries all claim to have made significant progress on language skills since they joined NATO's Partnership for Peace programmes some five years ago.
The Czech Republic took the matter in hand in 1996, ordering English classes for all officers, and making it a specific requirement for promotion to the highest ranks. But results are not overly impressive. Of over 4,000 people who took English tests, only 244 candidates could "understand precise details in a social and professional context", while only two scored full marks.
Poland's language skills are not much better: some 5,000 soldiers can speak some English, but only 1,000 speak it well, according to army official figures. But Warsaw commentators warn that it will be difficult to find 35 officers who speak English well enough to fill Poland's new positions at NATO headquarters in Brussels.
In Hungary, meanwhile, out of the army's 5,330 professionals, only 1,678 speak English, including 321 who admitted basic knowledge only, according to Budapest's defence ministry. "We cannot guarantee that from the day of accession, all Hungarian soldiers can speak with their allied colleagues, but basic communications will not be a problem," defence ministry state secretary, Mr Tamas Wachsler, said.
A NATO spokeswoman said there were "no major concerns" about language skills and their effect on "inter-operability", although she admitted that intensive training would continue.
"Young soldiers are having their training in English and in western languages in all three countries."
Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev yesterday attacked the accession of the three eastern European states to NATO, saying it humiliated Russia.
"I feel betrayed by the West," Mr Gorbachev said in a statement which appeared in the US press, in reference to NATO's enlargement. The move signified the "rejection of the strategy for a new common European system".
Mr Gorbachev concurred with the judgment of Russia's Gen Alexander Lebed that the move was as "humiliating for Russia as the Versailles Treaty was for Germany after the first World War.