BUCHAREST, ROMANIA - UPDATE - 4:25 p.m. (Eastern)/11:25 p.m. local

Wire reporters say a NATO spokesman has said tonight that Macedonia's invitation to join NATO has been blocked, and that invitations for Georgia and Ukraine to begin NATO's membership application process will not be issued at this week's summit.

If that's true, it's a defeat for the Bush administration, which has pushed this week for the two former Soviet blocs to gain access into the membership application process (MAP).

One other item of note: There are questions surrounding how NATO will meet the 1,000-troop enlargement of its 47,000-strong soldiers in Afghanistan. Canada has threatened to pull its troops out of Afghanistan if that quota is not met.

France had been reported to be planning a 1,000-troop commitment, but that has come into question within the last 24 hours, and now some reports say the U.S. will send more troops to fill in the gap.

One answer to the question is that the U.S. Marine increase on the way to Afghanistan had been 3,200 until President Bush recently started using the number 3,500. That might have some connection to questions about NATO allies and how many troops they're willing to add to the fight.

Mr. Bush attended a working dinner with the 26 heads of state of NATO members tonight. The dinner was scheduled to last 90 minutes but went over three hours, and we're now waiting to be briefed by a senior administration official, who will hopefully tell us more.

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Polish Foreign Minister Jaroslaw Kurski talks to Gazeta about Afghanistan and missile defense:

We're not negotiating with Russia whether Georgia or Ukraine can join the Nato. Russia has lodged some interesting proposals, such as that of aiding the transit of Nato troops to Afghanistan. This is less interesting for us, because Polish troops serve in the south of the country, but for the Germans, who have their troops in the north, rail transit through Russia can be an interesting option.

My sense is that the motivation behind the Russian proposals is chiefly commercial, which is nothing bad. Let the Russian railways or air carriers profit from the Nato's presence in Afghanistan. We have a common interest in preventing the taliban from returning to power.

Paddy Ashdown, the former British envoy to Bosnia who was blocked from becoming NATO's special Afghanistan envoy, gave a pessimistic assessment of the situation in Afghanistan.

"I'm not saying for a moment that we have lost. … I'm saying that we're getting pretty close to it," he said, according to the BBC.

Here is an interesting story on Bucharest authorities clearing dogs and humans (homeless people who supposedly live in the sewers) from the streets for the NATO summit. The Chinese government's official news agency, Xinhua, focuses on the canines first, which is interesting, to say the least.

While there are no official figures for the number of stray dogs in the city, local media estimates the tally at between 30,000 and 200,000.

It is also known that as many as 9,000 people are bitten by dogs every year.

The rest of the city is still suffering from a deteriorating canine occupation because of a January law prohibiting the city from euthanizing the dogs.

— Jon Ward, White House correspondent, The Washington Times