US officials said yesterday that President Bush's proposals to build an anti-missile defence shield were proceeding according to plan.
This followed a NATO ministerial meeting where Washington's allies reaffirmed their scepticism.
"We're where we should be at this point," the US State Department spokesman, Mr Richard Boucher, told reporters.
He said consultations with "friends and allies" of the US would continue.
He disputed suggestions that European foreign ministers in Budapest had rejected arguments from US Secretary of State Colin Powell about the need for the missile shield to protect Washington from attacks by "rogue states".
"We didn't come out here with a plan for approval," Mr Boucher stated. "We didn't have a plan."
Instead, the spokesman said, Mr Powell heard "a little more than several, and not quite many" allies explicitly endorsing the way that Washington is handling the issue - and that no minister raised objections.
"This is working with allies on strategic concepts, eventually leading to working with allies on programmes," he said.
European allies question the idea's technical feasibility but have welcomed Washington's pledge to carry out exhaustive consultations. Russia has objected strongly to the US plan.
Meanwhile, NATO and the European Union urged Macedonia to act quickly to seek an end to an ethnic Albanian rebellion yesterday, after an EU-brokered accord to restart inter-ethnic dialogue in Skopje.
The EU foreign policy chief, Mr Javier Solana, who brokered the deal on Tuesday, said it was a step in the right direction, but warned that time had been lost amid the fighting and political wrangling of the last week.
"What is very, very important is that the coalition government continues to work, it continues to work in a rapid manner," he told reporters in Budapest.
"The process of inter-ethnic dialogue yesterday resumed, and it is going to be resumed at a rhythm and a pace which is going to be faster than before."