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Lavrov Threatens Transit States by Sanctions
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said he doesn’t rule out imposing sanctions of Energy Charter on the countries that obstruct transit of supplies from Russia to Europe, RIA Novosti reported.
It is clear today, Lavrov said, that some transit states that are the Energy Charter members obstruct transit of supplies, “so the member states of this treaty can use sanctions to discipline the respective countries.”
Moscow doesn’t oppose the Charter as a whole, but it is displeased with some of its provisions, Lavrov made clear.
Despite that Russia sealed the Energy Charter, it hasn’t ratified the document yet, pushing for amendments. The purpose of the Charter is creating strict rules governing relations of exporters with consumers of energy supplies and with the transit states.
Russia has clashed with the transit states in the past two years. First, Ukraine refused to pay fixed prices in early 2006, which prompted Moscow to cut off the supplies for some time. In a year, Belarus attempted to impose duties on crude transit via its territory and even started stealing the crude from the pipelines. Russia responded by suspending supplies to Europe and resumed them no sooner than a compromise was found.
Suffering from the lack of supplies, Europe presented claims to Russia as the exporting party in both cases.
www.kommersant.com
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