(BRUSSELS) - Unable to secure a promise of quick entry into NATO, Ukraine hopes the conflict in Georgia will push the EU to recognise at a summit next month that Kiev does have a European future, according to a senior Ukrainian official.

"With what is happening in Georgia, this summit must be successful," by acknowledging Ukraine's future place in Europe's rich club, Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Konstiantyn Yeliseyev said Thursday.

"What we need from the EU is political and moral support," he said. "What we want is the political signal that the future of Ukraine lies within the EU."

But Yeliseyev refused to say where Kiev's priority lies today -- seeking accession to the European Union or membership in the world's biggest military alliance.

"It's like asking small children who they prefer, their mother or their father," he said.

Like NATO, which has 21 EU countries as members, the union is divided over whether the former Soviet state should be allowed to enter, perhaps even more divided than it is over strife-torn Georgia.

Poland and the Baltic countries, as well as Sweden and Britain, have always insisted that Ukraine is a European nation and therefore deserves a place at the table.

But the nations of "Old Europe" are opposed, amid concerns about continued enlargement, and also about irritating Russia, which has flexed its energy and political muscles, as well as its military ones recently.

This means Ukraine has remained cordoned off in the EU's "neighbourhood policy," along with Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Moldova.

The European Commission's official line is that the EU's door is "neither open nor closed" to Kiev.

France, which holds the EU's rotating presidency, has recently warmed to Ukraine's candidature, according to the French ambassador here, and Yeliseyev says Russia's intervention in Georgia may have tipped the scales.

"There are only two or three countries that remain strongly opposed," he said, but "the position maintained by EU states in June-July should now be modified in the face of current developments."

A Ukrainian diplomat told AFP that the opponents were mainly Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium.

Of the three countries, Ukraine places hopes that the biggest and most powerful, Germany, will soften its stance in the final days before an EU-Ukraine summit in Evian, France on September 9.

"We count very much on the leadership of Germany and on their courage," said Yeliseyev.

It appears that Ukraine will be able to count on the support of EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn.

"Ukraine could be the next target of political pressure by Russia, whose doctrine on its nearby neighbours is reminiscent of sphere politics," he said Wednesday in a speech to Finnish ambassadors.

"It is important from a stability point of view that the EU sends a clear political signal that Ukraine's integration into the Union is possible," he said. "We should not say 'never' to Ukraine."

However the commission, the EU's executive arm, distanced itself Thursday from those remarks, saying they had not been correctly reported by the media.

Kiev is now hoping that France will use "all its influence" to ensure that Germany accepts its membership perspective and allows that to be enshrined in a political declaration that will be released at the summit.

Berlin has generally insisted that the declaration underline that "no-one can prejudge the future" of Ukraine, according to a Ukrainian diplomat.

Germany has let Ukraine know that without this clause it will not agree to call an agreement being negotiated on their relations an "association accord," he said, on condition of anonymity.

Kiev wants that name more than anything, as it has been used to characterise agreements with all the countries whose EU aspirations have been recognised, like Poland in the 1990s or the Balkans today.

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