Appathurai said President Nicolas Sarkozy offered up to 1,000 extra French troops for the east of the country, enabling the United States to redeploy forces to the south, scene of the fiercest fighting with Taliban insurgents.
That in turn appeared to meet Canada's parliamentary conditions to keep troops in Afghanistan, where they have suffered heavy casualties at the hands of Islamist guerrillas.
"This is good news for Canada and good news for NATO," Sandra Buckler, spokeswoman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, said in regard to the French and American troop commitments.
She would not, however, confirm that this definitively meets Canada's self-imposed requirements of 1,000 extra troops.
Appathurai said the leaders agreed both Ukraine and Georgia were entitled to apply to join NATO and that it was "not a matter of whether but of when". But he said he did not expect either to be granted a Membership Action Plan (MAP) this week.
That left the sensitive question of what consolation prize to give the two aspirants when their disappointed leaders join the NATO summiteers at lunch on Thursday.
Bush had strongly urged sceptical European allies earlier to reward both countries for their democratic revolutions and not to allow Moscow a veto over NATO decisions.
On the other enlargement issue, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos told reporters: "For the moment, Greece is not in a position to agree to the entry of Macedonia, and it will be Croatia and Albania first."
Athens threatened to veto Skopje's entry over an unresolved dispute about the former Yugoslav republic's name, which is the same as the most northerly Greek province.
Analysts have said a rebuff for Macedonia could destabilise the ethnically divided state with knock-on regional effects.
