Post by justjohn on Sept 2, 2008 4:08:51 GMT -7
Vladimir Putin threatens Europe over energy supply
Vladimir Putin has warned Europe that Russia's energy reserves will flow to the Far East if the continent's leaders seek to punish his country for invading Georgia.
By Damien McElroy in Tbilisi and Bruno Waterfield in Brussels
Last Updated: 6:56AM BST 01 Sep 2008
The Russian prime minister travelled to Siberia to demand that work on a new pipeline to supply oil to Asia is speeded up.
In an echo of the photographs released last year that showed the bare-chested leader in a series of macho hunting poses, Mr Putin posed with a rifle for the cameras as scientists tranquilised a tiger at the Ussuri reserve.
The announcement on the eve of an emergency European Union summit in Brussels on Russia's occupation of Georgia put EU states on notice that Moscow is developing an alternative client base in the Far East.
Mr Putin lashed out at the European summit, defending the country's incursion into Georgia. "The truth is on our side," he told Vesti-24 television.
"We act absolutely correctly, morally and in accordance with international law. Someone in Europe wants to serve someone else's foreign-policy interests."
To stave off tough measures, including possible EU sanctions, Moscow has sent a variety of signals that it will use its energy clout to retaliate against any European reprimand for its refusal to implement a ceasefire with Georgia.
While expectations of a tough pan-European response have steadily diminished, Europe's energy dependence on Moscow will be overhauled. Officials will tell EU leaders that plans to reduce the continent's energy dependency on imports of Russian oil and gas supplies are advanced.
A feasibility study is already underway on the costs of creating gas stockpiles to prevent Russia using the threat of switching the lights out or turning off heating supplies to pressure Europe.
British officials said that Gordon Brown would propose that the G7 - the G8 minus Russia - would begin meeting again as a route to humiliating the Kremlin. "Russia does not like it when people get together get together and talk about them," a Foreign Office official said.
To avoid a damaging split between EU states, other direct measures against Russia and its allies in the breakaway Georgian enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia will be left to later meetings.
Efforts behind the scenes have focused on drawing up a travel ban on individuals associated with the Russian-backed enclaves that triggered the Georgian crisis.
Officials involved believe it will take at least two weeks to agree on a list Timur Yakashvili, the Georgian reunification minister, told The Daily Telegraph that he plans to provide information on up to 150 individuals implicated in the struggle over the two breakaway regions to European diplomats.
"It will take time to compile the information necessary but what we want to do is focus on activities that sustain these places," he said.
"We want to make sure that individuals who are important to both administrations are exposed and subject to bans."
However a French official derided calls from ex-Soviet bloc EU members for targeted sanctions on Russia.
"The time for sanctions has certainly not arrived", said an Elysée official.
"While this is not the case, our relations with Russia will remain under observation. We are still in a phase of dialogue, firm dialogue, but not in a sanctions phase."
Mr Brown warned that if fraught energy links with Moscow's were not reviewed the EU would "risk sleepwalking into an energy dependence" with Russia.
"No nation can be allowed to exert an energy stranglehold over Europe and the events of August have shown the critical importance of diversifying our energy supply," he said. "With states such as Russia increasingly using their energy resources as policy tools it is apparent that the security grounds for this shift are stronger as well."
Eventually the EU hopes to create an "energy Nato", with pooled supplies of fuel on hand to cushion European countries, expected to rely on Russia for up to three-quarters of their natural gas by 2020.
Under the plan, if Russia threatened to cut a country off - as it did during a price dispute with Ukraine in 2007 - other EU member states would have the gas resources to come to its aid.
EU officials have also been working hard behind the scenes to develop new relationships with oil and gas producers outside Russia's orbit.
Officials have confirmed that energy talks are ongoing with Nigeria, including possible pipeline supply, Iraq, Algeria, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan to find an alternative to oil and supplies from Russia.
Russian defiance has so far been undented. President Dimitri Medvedev said that Russia would hit back with sanctions of its own if it is penalised.
He said: "If needed, we also can adopt such special laws."
He also declared that Moscow would boost support for the two Georgian enclaves. "We will provide all kinds of assistance to these republics," he said.
"These international agreements will spell out our obligations on providing support and assistance: economic, social, humanitarian and military."
Meanwhile, Magomed Yevloyev, a vocal critic of the Kremlin's policies in the Ingushetia region in the Caucuses, died from a bullet wound to the head while in police custody, prosecutors said.