The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) has not yet decided if the next summit will be held in Latvia, a former Soviet republic.

According to NATO officials in Brussels, the next summit could be held in November 2006, and will focus on how to modernise the alliance, which has had difficulty re-establishing its identity since the end of the Cold War and break-up of the Soviet Union.

NATO has already held a summit in a former communist bloc country when the alliance met in the Czech capital Prague in 2002.

The last NATO summit was held in Istanbul, Turkey. The organisation does not have a hard-and-fast calendar for holding summits, but usually meets every two years.

NATO has 26 member states. Latvia and its two Baltic neighbours Estonia and Lithuania joined the alliance in 2003.

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