Washington  - President George W Bush and Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev on Wednesday welcomed an agreement that could allow Bulgarians to travel to the United States without a visa.

Bush praised Stanishev for Bulgaria's pledge to step up security measures on its border and cooperate with the United States on providing information about travellers and suspected terrorists. Those conditions still must be met for the preliminary deal to come into effect.

The number of rejections of Bulgarian visa applicants must also continue to drop.

"Today, because of the prime minister's hard work, there has been a breakthrough on the visa waiver as an important step toward achieving the same status as other countries in the EU," Bush said at a White House meeting.

US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ivailo Kalfin signed the deal on Tuesday.

There are currently 27 countries in the State Department's Visa Waiver Programme, but most of them are Western European and other allies like Japan and Australia.

The exclusion of NATO's Eastern European members has been a source of tension. Those countries believe they should be given equal footing with their Western counterparts because of their strong support for US foreign policy and the war effort in Iraq.

"When two nations have such confidence, when we have 200,000 Bulgarians living in the United States, more and more Americans coming to Bulgaria, to have this obstacle for normal human contacts" was unfortunate, Stanishev said.

Congress reformed the law in 2007, opening the door for Eastern European allies to enter the programme by cutting bilateral deals with Washington. The Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia have already signed preliminary agreements. (dpa)