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.

In April, at a summit in Bucharest, alliance leaders agreed that the two former-Soviet states would join NATO at an unspecified future date, but failed to find the consensus needed to offer them a MAP, seen as the first concrete step to membership.

The summit called for progress on the reforms that would bring the two states closer to membership, and tasked NATO foreign ministers with giving an initial assessment of that progress in December.

Since then, the Georgian and Ukrainian governments have lobbied intensively for a MAP, with the US their most vocal supporter.

But given the summer's war in Georgia and the collapse of the Ukrainian government, the member states which most opposed giving the two countries a MAP in April - Germany, France and Italy - argue that it would be the wrong time to make them an offer now.

There is "no reason" for the alliance to go further than the April agreement at this stage, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told the German parliament on Wednesday.

Since it would take a unanimous decision by NATO members to offer either country a MAP, diplomats say that it is all but impossible that either one will win the coveted prize on Tuesday.

Ministers now look set to focus on the question of how much power NATO should give to the cooperation commissions it has set up with each country in judging their readiness for membership.

"We believe that the NATO-Georgia Commission and the NATO-Ukraine Commission can be the bodies with which we intensify our dialogue and our activities with Georgia and (Ukraine)," Rice said.

However, that question also looks set to be divisive, with the countries which are most sceptical about giving either Georgia or Ukraine a MAP fearing that the US and Britain are trying to find a way of bringing the duo closer to membership without following the formal procedure of the MAP.

Ministers are also set to discuss relations with Russia, after they agreed to suspend all high-level meetings with the Russian government following the Georgian war.

The Russian government is currently lobbying for the creation of a new "security architecture" in Europe which would sideline NATO, a force Moscow sees as an outmoded "product of the Cold War."

However, any such creation would require NATO's unanimous approval, something member states seem unlikely to give at present.

The ministers are also expected to discuss operations against pirates in Somalia and in Afghanistan, after the alliance's top commander on Monday called for a 40-per-cent boost in troop numbers in the fight against the Taliban. (dpa)