Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer and Nato secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer were on hand to welcome heads of state and government from the 26 members of the alliance.
Eight warplanes repeatedly swooped low overhead in close formation, sending out plumes of coloured smoke in greeting.
The two-day meeting of Nato was also expected to approve the expansion of its peacekeeping operations in Afghanistan ahead of elections there in September.
The leaders were also due to hold separate conferences with heads of 23 other countries, most of them states such as Russia and Ukraine which have partnership arrangements with Nato.
Among the first to arrive was Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who took the controversial decision to withdraw his country's 1 300 troops from the US-led occupation force in Iraq immediately after his surprise election victory on March 14.
The occupation force formally hands over power to a transitional government in Baghdad last week.
Nato members agreed to its request for help in training the new Iraqi army on Saturday at a meeting at their headquarters in Brussels, but it is still unclear whether the training will take place inside or outside Iraq.
France and Germany, which opposed the US-led invasion, have said they are unwilling to send troops into Iraq, but the interim foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, insisted yesterday that training should take place on his country's soil.
Central Istanbul has been turned into an armed camp for the summit, but as many as 100 000 people turned out yesterday for a peaceful, if noisy, demonstration against the presence of US President George W. Bush.
The left-wing Freedom and Solidarity Party, which participated in the authorised protest, said it planned to hold a second demonstration closer to the conference centre at noon today. – Sapa-AFP.
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