NATO is set to approve specific defence plans for the Baltic states by the end of this year, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite said Monday.

"Discussions started last fall are proceeding and it finally will be the case that the Baltic region, after six years of membership, will really have defence plans. That is a serious achievement," Grybauskaite told reporters.

"I think the decision will be taken in the autumn," she added, alongside visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The 28-nation North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is due to hold a summit in the Portuguese capital Lisbon in November.

Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which won independence from the crumbling Soviet Union in 1991, joined NATO as well as the European Union in 2004.

The trio, with a total population of 6.8 million and a professional military of 20,500, have testy relations with their resurgent former master Russia, which only withdrew its troops from their territories in 1994.

The Baltic trio together contribute several hundred troops to NATO's Afghanistan mission.

They have chided some European allies for sidelining concerns closer to home, for example faulting France's plans to sell warships to Russia.

They have nonetheless repeatedly stressed that improving ties with Russia is by far their preferred option.

"I don't think a Cold War situation is profitable to anybody," said Grybauskaite told AFP in an interview earlier this year.

"It's not because we're afraid of anybody, but we'd like to have the same treatment, the same application of Article Five, and the same security as all member states have," Grybauskaite said.

Article Five of NATO's 1949 founding treaty dubs an attack against one member an attack against the rest.

Region-specific defence plans were developed for older NATO members during the Cold War but largely have been off the radar since then.

Baltic jitters rose after Russia's 2008 war with ex-Soviet Georgia, as well as Moscow's recent affirmation in its military doctrine that NATO's expansion is a threat.

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