The 18 member states of the European Space Agency (ESA) are also discussing ways of monitoring climate change and space debris, putting in place a satellite to relay telecommunications data, and further space exploration.

The ESA has said it would need 10.4 billion euros for its space programmes, but the agency's director Jean-Jacques Dordain has said he would be happy with a combined contribution of 9.3 billion euros, agency spokesman Franco Bonacina said Tuesday.

If approved, a budget of 9.3 billion euros would represent a 15 percent increase on the last one adopted in 2005.

"We really want to invest in the future and we think that investing in long-term programmes is one of the answers to the (economic) crisis," French Research Minister Valerie Pecresse told a news conference.

The priorities for spending on the ISS, which celebrated its tenth birthday last month, are not the same for all member countries.

"After all the improvements that have been made to the ISS, notably the installation this year of the European (science) laboratory Columbus, it is our duty to finance a programme that works," the head of the German Space Agency, Johann-Dietrich Worner, told AFP on the sidelines of the conference.

"But we see that France and Italy in particular do not share this position and envisage a lower budget. That is why we are trying again to get things moving on this point."

Germany wants that ESA members provide 350 million euros a year to improve the ISS instead of the 275 million annually projected to date, Worner added.

Such funding was necessary to ensure the construction and launching of four automated transfer vessels (ATVs) that Europe has pledged to the ISS, and to do more scientific experiments on board, he said.

The ESA ministers said they hoped the ISS, whose operational life beyond 2015 remains uncertain, would continue working until at least 2020.

"We are pushing and hoping it can go longer than that (2015), at least until 2020," said Bonacina.

He added that plans for the European development of an ATV that is able to return cargo to earth from the ISS, instead of disintegrating mid-space as is currently the case, are not expected to be finalised before 2011.

Ultimately, this cargo vessel may be adapted to transport astronauts.

For France, the focus on spending is on the Ariane 5 satellite and ATV launcher that will be equipped with a new cryogenic motor to allow launch satellites weighing up to 12 tons into orbit -- up from the current 10 tons.

An accord had been reached among ESA member states for a study phase for the new motor, at a cost of 340 million euros, said Pecresse. The development phase would cost another 1.5 billion euros.

The executive president of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) Astrium division, Francois Auque, that this programme was not sufficiently ambitious as China was planning to launch satellites weighing up to 15 tonnes.

Dordain said he was "confident" that a compromise on spending priorities would be reached.

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