Russia 090310 Basic Political Developments Russia, Hungary pms to discuss energy coop'n, gas issues
Hungarian PM to discuss trade, energy in Moscow
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- Bu səhifədəki naviqasiya:
- Baghdad to ask Moscow to write off remainder of debt
- European Parliament voices terms of agreement with Russia
- German vote a turning point on Russia and its energy
Hungarian PM to discuss trade, energy in Moscowhttp://en.rian.ru/world/20090310/120487025.html MOSCOW, March 10 (RIA Novosti) - Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany is to meet with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Tuesday for bilateral talks focusing on trade and energy issues. The first round of talks was held in December 2007 in Budapest. Russian-Hungarian trade in 2008 reached a record high of some $13 billion, making Russia Hungary's second most important trade partner after Germany. Hydrocarbons dominate Russia's exports to Hungary. Independent crude producer LUKoil alone supplies about 5 million metric tons annually to Hungary and runs over 70 filling stations in the country. Hungary exports machinery, equipment, pharmaceuticals, chemical products and foodstuffs to Russia. Moscow and Budapest signed in 2008 an agreement on the construction of the Hungarian leg of the South Stream gas pipeline, with an annual capacity of 10 billion cubic meters. The first deliveries along the South Stream pipeline are scheduled to start in 2013. The project, expected to annually pump 31 billion cubic meters of Central Asian and Russian gas to the Balkans and on to other European countries, also involves Bulgaria, Serbia, Italy and Greece. Baghdad to ask Moscow to write off remainder of debthttp://en.rian.ru/world/20090310/120491091.html BAGHDAD, March 10 (RIA Novosti) - Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki is to ask Russia to write off the remainder of the country's debt to Moscow during a visit to the Russian capital in April, an Iraqi government spokesman said on Tuesday. "The head of the Iraqi government will discuss writing off the remainder of the debt [to Russia]," Ali Dabbagh said. He also said that the Iraqi premier would discuss Saddam Hussein-era business contracts, as well as efforts to strengthen bilateral ties. After former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was deposed in 2003, Iraq owed Russia $12.9 billion. However, the Paris Club, of which Russia is a member, subsequently took the decision to write off some 80% of Iraq's debts at the end of 2004. Moscow then cancelled 93% of Baghdad's debts.
10.03.09 10:22The European Parliament will focus on the defense of human rights, security guarantees and the unlimited gas supply to the neighbor states while working on the new basic agreement with Russia. The recommendations, which have been drafted at the session of the foreign affairs committee of the European Parliament, say that the resumption of dialogue between Russia and the EU does not mean that the Europe legalizes the current status quo of Russia in Georgia`s breakaway regions. According to the European MPs, Russia is obliged to propose firm guarantees that Russia will not use force against its neighbors.
The EU is seeking bilateral agreements on gas shipments with former Soviet countries including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Ukraine and Belarus to secure stable supplies, a commissioner said today. “Gas should flow even as problem arises,” said Benita Ferrero-Waldner, European Commissioner for external relations in a presentation today in London. “We need partners whose governments’ honor contracts.” A price dispute between Russia and Ukraine over gas supplies blocked transit shipments to the 27-member EU for two weeks in January. OAO Gazprom, Russia’s natural-gas exporter, resumed supplies to the European Union via Ukraine on Jan. 20, after they signed 10-year natural-gas contracts. The EU agreements with former Soviet countries would depend on each country’s role in gas trade, Benita Ferrero-Waldner said. Armenia and Moldova depend on gas imports for most of their energy needs, while Ukraine is the major route for Russian gas on the way to Europe. The potential for EU partnerships would depend on countries’ progress toward democracy, she said. The EU will host a conference in Brussels on March 23 to discuss Ukraine’s gas-transit industry and funding commitments from member states and international institutions that would go to improve the safety and quality of the pipelines. The deepening global economic crisis may complicate efforts to raise money for modernizing Ukraine’s natural-gas pipeline network. “We are looking for investors to upgrade the Ukraine’s pipelines,” the commissioner said.
The Russian-Ukrainian dispute also renewed calls for the region to reduce its reliance on Russia by building up new links such as the proposed Nabucco link via Turkey. Russia, which supplies a quarter of Europe’s gas, cut off shipments to Ukraine on Jan. 7 after accusing it of siphoning off EU-bound gas, a charge the country denies. More than 20 European countries were affected, as 80 percent of Russian gas exports pass through Ukraine’s pipeline network. European Commission President Jose Barroso said the cut-off should never have happened and that both Ukraine and Russia had damaged their credibility. Ukraine should set up a joint venture with Russia’s OAO Gazprom and European companies including E.ON AG and GDF Suez SA to guarantee gas supplies after January’s dispute, Ukrainian billionaire Dmitry Firtash said on Feb. 2 in a Bloomberg Television interview. Firtash controls 45 percent of Swiss- registered gas trading company RosUkrEnergo AG.
Published: March 9, 2009 
BERLIN: When Germany votes on Sept. 27, the choices could include a government with fewer ambiguities about where it stands on Russia and a plan for taking a less dependent path on energy supply. Six months before national elections, this option ranks as an interesting maybe. The uncertainties of a dramatic recession make both for a misty outcome to the voting, and a campaign process subject to the daily tremors of a failing economy and the solutions, hesitantly presented, for healing it. But the rising poll results of the Free Democrats, a right-of-center party with traditional trans-Atlantic ties, suggest they could govern with Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, and perhaps offer the country a palpable notion of change. A speed-read synopsis: The Free Democrats favor Germany's return to atomic energy, and Merkel's party is acknowledging the need for a broader energy mix. A change in approach could diminish Germany's energy reliance on Russia. It could also create movement on a common European energy policy, which the current coalition of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats has resisted. And - no sure thing at all - a coalition of conservatives and liberals might facilitate more German clarity in marking off red lines for Russia's seeming attempt to re-establish zones of influence among its neighbors. Werner Hoyer, the Free Democrats' foreign policy spokesman in the Bundestag, laid it out simply enough in his office last week: "The EU's energy policy is incoherent. It weakens our position vis-à-vis Russia. The German government shies away from dealing with it in part because of a desire to avoid the involvement of nuclear power." That's an incomplete explanation, but in the context of German politics, calling attention to relations with Russia involving German weakness is fairly daring stuff. Artfully, Hoyer underscored it by saying that Guido Westerwelle, the party's candidate for chancellor (and likely foreign minister in a coalition with the CDU), is a "convinced Atlanticist" and that Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the Social Democrats' choice for chancellor and the coalition's current foreign minister, is anything but. The issue of how Germany defines itself in relation to Russia is taking shape more distinctly in discussions outside the country than it is in the internal political debate here. Germany's unwillingness to back the EU's plan for a natural gas pipeline from Central Asia, which would skirt Russia, and its de facto rejection of NATO membership plans for Georgia and Ukraine have disturbed its eastern neighbors in NATO and chafed the new U.S. administration. In an interview with a French journalist in Washington last month, Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former national security advisorwho talks to the current White House, said, "If the romance between Germany and Russia goes too far, it could strike a blow against European integration. It would be a good thing if the other countries in Europe said to Germany: Act in a way that makes your priorities clear." A political scientist with a background in the German establishment, Constanze Stelzenmüller, writing in the current edition of Foreign Affairs, came to a similar point. She asked: "Is Germany able and willing to use its considerable political resources to change Russia's behavior and to stand up to Russia when necessary?" Where Germany sits on an openly more aggressive Russia has become enough of a controversial subject in Europe that a working paper circulated at the NATO ministerial meeting in Brussels last week emphasized that Article 5 of its founding treaty - which asserts that aggression against a member is aggression against all of NATO - "remains at the heart of our Alliance." The paper, called "NATO and Europe's East" and jointly drawn up by the United States and Germany, was explained to me as designed to combat the idea among many East European members that, following Russia's invasion of Georgia, the alliance was divided between an American camp and a German one putting a priority on uncomplicated relations with Russia. But the joint paper may have also exposed more differences than was intended. It did not say, as Hillary Clinton chose to on her own, that both parties "do not recognize any sphere of influence on the part of Russia"; nor that they are, again in Clinton's separate words, very troubled by the "use of energy as a tool of intimidation." Those phrases circumscribe the Obama administration's pursuit of a more active dialogue with Russia. A U.S. official said that consensus was being sought on such issues, but that it "would be naïve to think we could do it all in one bite." In general, the Free Democrats have been the least constrained of the German political parties in discussing what can be seen as German complaisance toward Russia. They do not flinch from pointing out the embarrassment of Gerhard Schröder, the former Social Democratic chancellor, working full-time on Vladmir Putin's payroll at Gazprom. Whether this serves as a campaign plus is another question. The liberals seem to be winning Christian Democrat votes by calling Merkel's rescue packages a slide into an "East Germany light" and offering the middle class tax breaks. Hoyer notes: "Steinmeier can't hide that he was Schröder's right-hand man during a very questionable period, which is a burden for some of our allies and friends." An occasional advisor to Nicolas Sarkozy, talking from Paris about the Free Democrats' support for reviving nuclear power in Germany and its political implications, pointed out the announcement last week of Siemens's plan to build nuclear reactors with Rosatom, the Russian atomic energy agency, rather than the French specialist, Areva. The Frenchman asked out loud, "Once the reactors are up and working in Germany, could you suppose Russia might be the sole uranium supplier?" Yüklə 405 Kb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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