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KIEV : Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko on Friday urged fellow leaders at a regional summit in Kiev to diversify eastern Europe's energy supply routes away from Russia and not succumb to "energy blackmail."
His Georgian counterpart Mikheil Saakashvili also warned that Moscow's support for separatists in Georgia's Abkhazia region was "a great threat" to the security of energy supplies passing through the Caucasus.
Saakashvili said Russia had turned into an "export monopolist of all energy supplies -- both its own and those of Central Asia" and accused Moscow of undermining the ideal of a common European energy market.
Speaking to six other heads of state at the summit, Yushchenko said his country could play a much bigger role as a supply route from energy-rich Caspian Sea states such as Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.
"Ukraine has a powerful energy potential and is therefore planning to play a bigger role in shaping Eurasian energy security," he said.
Referring to claims that Russia uses its energy might for political ends, he said that "energy blackmail" was "an almost daily occurrence in our lives."
Following several run-ins with Moscow over energy imports, Ukraine has been promoting a variety of gas and oil pipeline schemes intended to circumvent Russia's long-standing monopoly on supplies across much of eastern Europe.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said later Friday that Moscow was ready to end the use of intermediary companies for gas deliveries to Ukraine, a key stumbling block in ties, if Kiev pays its debts.
"Russia is ready to deliver gas directly to Ukraine and without the use of intermediaries but for that to happen it is absolutely essential to settle the outstanding debt of previous years," Putin told his Ukrainian counterpart Yulia Tymoshenko, according to the Russian news agency Interfax.
Tymoshenko said last month that Ukraine had settled its debt with Russia at a meeting with Putin's predecessor.
The Ukrainian premier meanwhile announced that she had reached an agreement with Putin in Minsk to start talks on "strategic accord" covering Russian gas supplies to her country.
Also attending Friday's meeting in Kiev were President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, which is seeking to boost energy exports, EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs and the presidents of Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.
Yushchenko is particularly promoting a plan to use a 670-kilometre (418-mile) pipeline built in 2001 to pump Caspian oil from Ukraine's Black Sea port of Odessa to Brody, a town close to the Polish border.
The oil would be shipped to Odessa from Georgia after being pumped there from the Caspian and could supply Czech, German and Ukrainian refineries, a Ukrainian foreign ministry official said earlier.
Critics of Russia point to several incidents in which Moscow has cut supplies to recalcitrant neighbours.
Lithuania briefly vetoed the start of European Union talks with Russia this year following a cut-off of Russian oil supplies in a move that Moscow said was purely technical but Vilnius insisted was politically motivated.
Another example cited by critics was the disruption of gas supplies in several European countries after Russia briefly turned off the taps to Ukraine in January 2006 as part of a bitter price dispute.
Russia insists it is a reliable supplier to countries that pay for energy supplies on time and at market prices.
Yushchenko also said earlier that Ukraine was seeking US$2.5 billion (1.6 billion euros) from the European Union to upgrade its natural gas pipelines, which help carry Russian gas to European markets.
Friday's summit also looked at boosting Ukraine's oil refining capacity and developing the nuclear sector, a sensitive subject in a country that was the site of the world's worst nuclear catastrophe, Chernobyl, in 1986.
In addition, Yushchenko said the summit would examine the potential for developing Ukraine's own oil and gas reserves and encouraging foreign investment in the sector.
- AFP/vm
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