BUCHAREST, ROMANIA - One of my favorite details from this morning's story got cut from our newspaper for space reasons.

At the leader's dinner last night that kicked off the NATO summit, the speeches and debate over inviting two former Soviet blocs to join went on so long that first lady Laura Bush left early, leaving her husband behind.

I was part of the press pool for the dinner, which was held at Cotroceni Palace. President Bush is one of a handful of world leaders (apparently the Pope is one of the others) who always has a press contingent traveling with him wherever he goes.

The dinner began just after 7 and was scheduled to end at 8:30. At 8:25, White House advance staffers began to tell us with some urgency that we should get on our buses because the president was scheduled to leave in 10 minutes.

So we did, and we drove down a hill to a large, stone-surfaced roundabout to wait for the president's limo to pass by. We waited and waited, and finally got out of the vans and started standing around and watching a grim-looking Romanian policeman walk by us with a large police dog that was not on a leash.

Five minutes before 10, almost 90 minutes behind schedule, we saw flashing lights and jumped into our vans, figuring it was time to go. However, while it was a motorcade of U.S. vehicles, it was smaller than the usual presidential motorcade, and then one of the press contingent said that he could 100 percent say that he say Mrs. Bush in the back seat of one of the vehicles.

The consensus was that it could turn out to be a long night for all of us, but Mr. Bush left about 30 minutes later.

Mr. Bush left without winning over key European allies such as Germany on the issue of inviting Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO's membership process, which he had said NATO should do earlier in the day.

The AP's Terrence Hunt wrote that it was a "painful diplomatic setback" for Mr. Bush.

Oh, and did I mention that security is tight here in Bucharest? Much of the city center, where 26 heads of state and about a dozen leaders of other countries are meeting, is sealed off. Police officers and soldiers in full body armor are stationed on the street 24 hours a day.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is supposedly staying at the press hotel -- the Intercontinental -- and security is pretty tight here as well. Even with our press passes, upon entering our hotel, we have to put our bags through a screener, walk through a magnotometer, and then we still get wanded and, depending on your luck, maybe even a bit of a hand patdown by police.

I took this picture outside our hotel yesterday as an unidentified official, possibly Mr. Gates, left in a motorcade.

— Jon Ward, White House correspondent, The Washington Times