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US President George W. Bush arrived here for talks with Estonian officials, the first stop of a European and Middle Eastern tour likely to be dominated by conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Bush is the first serving US president to visit the former Soviet republic, ahead of a NATO summit in neighbouring Latvia beginning late on Tuesday.
He is scheduled to hold talks Tuesday with Estonian Prime Minister Toomas Hendrik Ilves and Prime Minister Andrus Ansip, before flying to Riga in the afternoon where he will be met by Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga.
But his talks with Baltic leaders will be overshadowed by developments in Afghanistan, where NATO is tackling a tenacious insurgency in its biggest-ever ground campaign, and in Iraq, which is teetering on the brink of civil war.
Bush will urge leaders of the 26-member alliance to put more military means and funds into conflict-torn Afghanistan, amid fears that ordinary Afghans could turn back to the Taliban if reconstruction is too slow.
He leaves Riga on Wednesday, headed for Jordan and talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki; a trip added to his itinerary as violence rages to new extremes in neighbouring Iraq.
The heightened unrest has brought new pressure to bear on Bush to radically change his policy toward the country, more than three years after the US-led war to oust former dictator Saddam Hussein.
