http://www.themoscowtimes.com/article/1010/42/375661.htm
Mikhail Klimentyev / RIA-NOVOSTI
Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, left, and President Dmitry
Medvedev at a welcoming ceremony Wednesday in the Kremlin. The two postponed
the signing of a key gas accord.
Russian, Turkmen Leaders Postpone Pipeline Accord
26 March 2009The Moscow Times
President Dmitry Medvedev and Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov
pledged friendship and cooperation in a meeting Wednesday in Moscow, but there
was little in the way of concrete agreements between Russia and gas-rich
Turkmenistan.
The two leaders discussed cooperation on telecommunications and agriculture and
extended invitations to one another to attend agricultural forums to be held
this year in St. Petersburg and the Turkmen capital of Ashgabat.
They also signed an agreement to build direct railway and ferry links
throughout towns in the Astrakhan region, which borders the Caspian Sea.
While the two leaders discussed the importance of reliable gas deliveries, the
signing of an accord on the East-West gas pipeline was postponed until their
next meeting, said Sergei Prikhodko, an aide to Medvedev.
The link, which Prikhodko said could cost $1 billion to build, is widely seen
as a potential challenge to the Western-backed Nabucco pipeline, which seeks to
bring natural gas from Central Asia to Europe, bypassing Russia.
The date of the next meeting was not announced.
The topic of natural gas deliveries has been a sensitive one for Russia in
recent months. The country broke off talks with Ukraine on Tuesday after Kiev
angered the Kremlin by asking the European Union to modernize its pipeline
network, which carries 80 percent of Russian gas supplies to Europe.
The spat revived fears of a repeat of January's gas dispute between the two
countries, when major European customers were left without Russian gas for two
weeks in the dead of winter.
Russia and Turkmenistan had a trade volume of $6.9 billion dollars last year,
$6 billion of which came from natural gas exports.
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