BRUSSELS : Prague Courts NATO

President Vaclav Havel of Czechoslovakia will become the first head of an East European country to visit the North Atlantic Treaty Organization when he appears in Brussels on Thursday to address the NATO Council, the group’s governing body.

NATO officials expect Havel to suggest the terms under which Czechoslovakia and other former members of the defunct Warsaw Pact might affiliate themselves with the Western defense alliance that was the pact’s longtime adversary.

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev had intended to visit NATO at the end of last year, but he decided to stay home to wrestle with the independence movements in the Baltic republics.