Brussels  - Despite intense lobbying, Georgia and Ukraine look certain not to be offered a fast track towards NATO membership when alliance foreign ministers meet on Tuesday to discuss their membership hopes, diplomats said.

"There does not need at this point in time to be any discussion of a membership action plan (MAP) ... Georgia and Ukraine are not ready for membership. That is very clear," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Wednesday.

Washington  - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice backed off plans to offer Georgia and Ukraine a formal roadmap for joining NATO, but said the United States is still committed to bringing the two countries into the alliance.

Rice is due to arrive in Brussels next week for a conference of NATO foreign minister December 2-3. She does not plan to push for quickly offering the former Soviet states a so-called membership action plan, which would place them on course to join NATO.

"Georgia and Ukraine are not ready for membership. That is very clear," Rice said, referring to the benchmarks countries must meet to enter NATO. "There does not need at this point in time to be any discussion of a" membership action plan.

Kiev - Somali pirates holding the crew of a Ukrainian cargo ship loaded with tanks and munitions reduced their ransom demand to a cut-rate three million dollars, Sehodnia newspaper reported Wednesday.

The seventeen officers and crew of the MV Faina, carrying an arms shipment from Ukraine to Kenya, have been in pirate custody since September. The vessel was anchored near the Somali port Hobyo at last report.

Kiev - An underground explosion killed five Ukrainians attempting to remove coal and scrap metal from an abandoned mine, a Ministry of Emergency Situations official said Monday.

The blast took place in a locked-down shaft near the village Trubne, in the eastern Luhansk province.

It was not immediately clear whether the victims died in the explosion or the ensuing below-ground fire, Channel 5 television reported.

Investigating police said a methane gas buildup and unsafe use of metal objects was a probable cause of the explosion.

Kiev - Ukraine's decision to honour millions of people who died of famine in the 1930s has drawn cries of historical revisionism from Russia, which disputes claims that the Stalin-era government targeted Ukrainians with policies that allowed the famine.

Historians generally agree that the famine was a side effect of a campaign by dictator Josef Stalin's communists against rich farmers in the former Soviet Union.