NATO leaders begin negotiations in earnest over Afghanistan Thursday, after the opening day of their summit in Bucharest saw a successful French offer of more troops, but a public disagreement over the alliance's enlargement.
The agenda at the summit sees Afghan President Hamid Karzai and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon join NATO leaders and representatives from all the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force contributors for high-level talks.
In the morning, the heads of the 26-strong alliance will hold their first formal working session, picking up on the themes of Wednesday's dinner -- enlargement, Kosovo and Afghanistan, plus other issues.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior US administration official told AFP Wednesday night: "We're headed to a good day tomorrow."
"You're going to see progress on Afghanistan, on the issue of enlargement."
"It's pretty clear that there are going to be new commitments to the effort (in Afghanistan), and they won't be insignificant."
After an opening dinner stretching late into the night on Wednesday, a French offer of a battalion of troops for eastern Afghanistan freed up enough US troops for the volatile south to head off a Canadian threatened pull out, a NATO spokesman confirmed.
But a public war of words between US President George W. Bush and the German Chancellor Angela Merkel over the fate of Ukraine and Georgia's bids for NATO's "membership action plans" saw one of the most fractious openings to an alliance summit in recent times.
A refusal by Greece to budge on its threatened veto of NATO accession by Macedonia unless the country changed its name to recognise Athens' concerns over Greece's northern region of the same name also marred the opening day in the Romanian capital.
In one concrete success, NATO spokesman James Appathurai indicated that Albania and Croatia would receive their invitations to join the alliance at this summit.
"It is safe to say that at the moment there is a consensus for two of the three countries to be offered invitations to begin accession talks," he said.
"There is also a unanimous view within the alliance that the third country, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, should as soon as possible be offered the opportunity to begin accession talks," he said.
The leaders of Albania and Croatia will get their first taste of NATO's highest body, when they sit with their counterparts, alongside Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, in a special session.
The ambitions of Macedonia -- the southernmost of the former Yugoslav republics -- have been challenged by neighbour Greece in a dispute over its official name.
Greece refuses to recognise the former Yugoslav republic's name because it is the same as that of the northern Greek province of Macedonia and Athens worries that this could imply a claim on its territory.
"There is no consensus on this issue," said Greek foreign ministry spokesman Giorgos Koumoutsakos after the dinner, holding out little hope for a breakthrough on Thursday.
