(BRUSSELS) - Ukraine's hopes of becoming an EU candidate nation, heightened by Russia's actions in Georgia, are set to receive a knock at a summit in France on Tuesday, according to European officials.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, will meet his Ukrainian counterpart Viktor Yushchenko for the summit in the French town of Evian, on the banks of Lake Geneva.

Ukraine had been hoping that Moscow's military intervention with fellow EU and NATO hopeful Georgia would work in its favour as fears grow of a resurgent Russia seeking renewed influence in its former Soviet satellites.

Kiev's abiding goal is to become a fully-fledged member of the European Union. Before that can happen it must be named an official candidate nation.

However this possibility appears to have been shelved after lengthy discussions between the 27 current member states, routinely at odds over how to handle the former Soviet republic.

Ukrainian leaders are concerned that its mainly Russian-populated autonomous region of Crimea may fall under Moscow's influence in the same manner as Georgia's breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Volodymyr Ohryzko has already accused Moscow of handing out passports to ethnic Russians in Crimea.

EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn has said that the European Union should clearly signal its support for Ukraine's future membership to prevent it from becoming Russia's "next target".

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," led by Germany, 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.

Last week EU ambassadors drew up a draft declaration for Tuesday's summit which omitted the key phrase "European perspective," familiar eurospeak for an agreed goal of eventual EU membership.

In the text -- drawn up for Sarkozy, Ukraine's Yushchenko and EU Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso to approve in Evian -- the EU simply acknowledges "the European aspirations of Ukraine" and leaves open the way for "further progressive developments in EU-Ukraine relations".

EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner has confirmed that the key "perspectives" phrase would not make it into the final summit text.

Bitter in-fighting between Ukraine's Western-oriented president and prime minister, sharpened by divisions over ties with Russia following its conflict with Georgia, is certainly not helping its cause.

The Ukrainian president on Wednesday accused opponents in parliament of a coup attempt and threatened early elections after the prime minister's party sided with pro-Russian deputies to pass laws cutting his powers.

"We would expect some kind of settling down," on the political front, said French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.

A cautious EU, in the draft summit statement, accepts that a wide-ranging partnership deal currently being negotiated with Ukraine should be called an "Association Agreement" -- the term used for similar pacts with Balkan nations which have a recognised future within the European bloc.

However this text insists the agreement "shall not prejudice any future developments in EU-Ukraine relations."

The European Union does at least seem to have placed Ukraine at the forefront of its "neighbourhood" policy, which encourages economic and political reforms through regular dialogue for nations around the bloc.

"We have to take it one step at a time, be very careful," said Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb in Avignon.

"I think we should focus collectively on the stabilisation of the Caucasus and start from that."

EU-Ukraine Summit

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