Friday January 9, 07:59 PM
Gas deal elusive as EU demands action on crisis
By Dario Thuburn
MOSCOW (AFP) - Russia said Friday it could resume gas supply to Europe immediately but would do so only when Ukraine signed a deal allowing independent experts from both the EU and Russia to monitor transit gas flows.
Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, whose country holds the EU presidency, meanwhile travelled to Kiev for talks with Ukrainian leaders on the Russia-Ukraine gas dispute that has slammed Europe with huge supply cuts.
Hopes for a quick resolution of the Russia-Ukraine gas dispute that has hit with huge supply cuts grew when the head of Russian gas giant Gazprom said he anticipated an accord that would allow Russia to resume supply of gas.
"We are counting on the protocol being signed today... and then we will literally immediately resume delivery," Miller told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in a meeting in southern Russia, broadcast on state television.
Hours later however Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov told AFP the firm was "still waiting" for Ukraine to sign the agreement setting up an international commission to monitor transit of Russian gas through Ukraine.
Russia has insisted that the monitoring commission include representatives from four parties: Ukraine's gas company Naftogaz, Russia's Gazprom, the gas firms of European consumer states and European Union gas experts.
Medvedev warned that the monitoring commission must be made up of qualified gas transport engineers only and called for the composition of the body to be made public.
A Naftogaz spokesman in Kiev told AFP that the company was "not against" including Russian monitors in the international monitoring teams that would operate at gas pumping facilities on Ukrainian territory.
And a spokesman for Russia's powerful Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Moscow and the were in "full" agreement on the need for, and composition of, the proposed international monitoring commission.
It was clear late Friday however that a deal that would allow a resumption of Russian gas supply remained elusive. A spokeman for Putin said Topolanek would travel to Moscow to meet the Russian prime minister on Saturday.
Russia cut off gas to Ukraine on New Year's Day after the two countries failed to reach an agreement on payment by Kiev of arrears and on new prices for 2009.
It followed a week later by cutting off all gas transiting Ukraine for customers in Europe, saying it was forced to do so after Kiev shut all possible outlets for Russian gas to Europe and began "stealing" Russian gas.
Ukraine denied the theft charge and instead accused Russia of intentionally cutting supplies to provoke a crisis.
Amid the continued wrangling, the EU in Brussels demanded that Russian supplies resume "without any further delay."
Medvedev said Russia was anxious to re-start pumping gas to its European clients, but said it could not do so until appropriate verification measures were in place in Ukraine because Moscow has "no trust" in Kiev.
In Brussels, the European Commission said it would take at least three days for Russian gas deliveries to return to Europe once an agreement is reached.
Scores of schools in central Europe have been shut down and thousands of households left without heating and hot water at a time when many are facing temperatures below freezing.
In Bulgaria the government began rationing gas supplies to industries and temperatures in buildings plummeted. Seventy-five schools across the country were closed for lack of adequate heating.
Serbia has switched 90 percent of its heating plants to crude oil after Russian gas was halted at midnight on Tuesday.
In the snow-blanketed Bosnian capital Sarajevo, about 72,000 households remained without heating for a fourth day due to the halt in Russian supplies.
Even after the dispute over the transit across Ukraine is resolved, Kiev and Moscow still have to solve their standoff over the gas Gazprom supplies to that domestic Ukrainian market that sparked the problems in Europe.
Miller told Medvedev on Friday that there had been "no progress" in those negotiations with Ukraine and Gazprom later said Ukraine now had to pay around 470 dollars per thousand cubic metres of gas in the first quarter of 2009.
Ukraine paid 179.5 dollars in 2008, far less than what EU states pay.
|
|
|
Send Article by Email
Send Article by IM
Blog This with Y! 360
Printable View
