"I am sure that the issue of membership of NATO for Israel could only come about in the context of a wider settlement of the Israel-Palestine issue," Peter Ricketts, Britain's permanent representative to NATO, told a security conference near Tel Aviv.

Israel has been developing closer relations with NATO in recent years.

It attended talks at the alliance's Brussels headquarters last month, along with representatives from six other Mediterranean-rim countries, as part of efforts to increase cooperation against terrorism.

Oded Eran, Israel's ambassador to the European Union, told the conference that NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom had held talks on Sunday "about upgrading relations."

"The secretary general will come to Israel in the spring," Eran added.

However Ricketts poured cold water on any suggestion that the closer ties could be a precursor to Israeli membership of NATO.

"I think there's a lot that NATO and Israel could do together in areas like counter-terrorism and in discussing the threats posed from WMD" (weapons of mass destruction), he added.

"I don't think it (membership) is for the immediate future. I don't see how Israel could become a member without the settlement of the Israel-Palestine issue," he said.

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