Romania’s foreign minister rejects criticism coming from Russia (Dec 7, 2006)

Dec 7, 2006 (Romania Report, citing AP)

BUCHAREST - On Thursday, the foreign minister Mihai-Razvan Ungureanu defended President Traian Basescu, who recently disapproved Moscow's natural gas policies, saying Romania must explore alternatives to Russian energy, Associated Press reports.

Ungureanu was addressing comments by Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who said earlier this week, that Moscow did not welcome Basescu's statements.

Basescu said last month that Russia uses its state-controlled gas monopoly OAO Gazprom to inflict "political pressure" to Europe, which depends on natural gas from Russia. He said the European Union should make it a top priority to find alternatives to Gazprom.

Ungureanu reiterated Basescu's comments, saying Thursday that Romania cannot "ignore the fact that Russia uses economic leverage" in the supply of natural gas to Europe, he told The Associated Press in an interview. They turn into a mess.

However, the minister sought to play down speculation that Russian-Romanian relations, that turned out to be ice-cold even before the fall of communism in Romania in 1989, were taking a new downturn as ex-communist Romania joins the European Union on Jan. 1.

Many in the EU are wary of a growing dependence on Russia, which provides 30 percent of EU all energy imports - including 44 percent of gas imports. Fears were fueled by a brief shutdown of gas supplies to Europe amid an acrimonious price dispute with Ukraine earlier this year.

Ungureanu noted that Basescu's remarks were not "beyond the line of the European Union, not beyond what we usually say in public," he said. "I cannot see any blatant new issues that the president would have brought up," he said.

Romania currently pays $285 for 1,000 cubic meters of natural gas from Russia - about the average for Europe, but expensive in impoverished Romania, where many in this nation of 22 million people rely on gas for cooking and heating. Some 70 percent of gas needs are met domestically, 30 percent imported from Russia.

Ungureanu said Romania, which borders the Black Sea, has a duty to explore alternative energy routes.

"We can't sit back in the armchairs and do nothing," he said.

In October, Basescu indirectly accused Russia of benefiting from continuing "frozen conflicts" in the former Soviet countries of Georgia and Moldova in televised comments from Bucharest he made to a gathering of experts from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington attending a conference.

"The single winner of the extended period of having frozen conflicts is the country which doesn't like to have democratic development," he said. "It is the country which still continues to believe that different countries can be controlled for next decade or for the next century."

Romania this year hosted a Black Sea summit where regional leaders discussed alternative energy routes. Russia was represented only by its ambassador to Bucharest.



Romania Report, quoting AP