GREECE, AZERBAIJAN TO WORK CLOSER ON ENERGY SECURITY
EUBusiness
s-eu/1234888322.17
Feb 17 2009
(ATHENS) – Greek Prime Minister Costas Caramanlis and Azerbaijani
President Ilham Aliyev agreed Tuesday to work more closely on getting
Azeri gas into Europe to help ease its energy security problems.
Azerbaijain was a key partner for Europe both as a producer of
hydrocarbons and as transit country, Caramanlis said after meeting
Aliyev.
The two countries have agreed to work together to extend a
Greco-Turkish pipeline inaugurated in 2007 to supply gas from the
Caspian Sea to Italy and western Europe, with the work due to be
completed in 2011.
Aliyev urged quick progress in talks on the project and said Azerbaijan
would "plays and will continue to play an important role in assuring
the European Union’s energy security.
He called on the support of Greece, which currently holds the rotating
presidency of the Organization of Security and Co-operation in Europe
(OSCE), for help resolving the conflict with the disputed region of
Nagorny Karabakh.
Armenian forces seized control of Nagorny Karabakh from Azerbaijan
in the early 1990s in a war that claimed an estimated 30,000 lives
and forced about a million people to flee their homes.
The row between Ukraine and Russia that disrupted gas supplies to
much of the rest of Europe in January underlined the need for the
European Union to free itself of its dependency on Russia for gas.