BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

16/12/2006

// After talks in the Kremlin he had to wind up his cultural program

Russian President Vladimir Putin met with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko in the Kremlin yesterday. After 3 hours of talks, Lukashenko left Moscow and returned to Minsk. Belarus hoped to do away with the price of $200 for 1,000 cubic meters of Russian natural gas. However, Russia-Belarus talks proved to be a failure.

Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko met in the Kremlin's Green Hall yesterday. Putin spoke about the budget of the Union State, and about the developing military-technical cooperation between Russia and Belarus.

Lukashenko agreed that both issues are important. However, he reminded that it was necessary to discuss practical issues as well. Certainly, the only practical issue which really interested Lukashenko in those talks was the introduction of export duties on Russian oil supplied to Belarus.

The cost of this issue for Belarus is estimated at nearly $2 billion annually. Economic war for control over Beltransgaz has been glowing for several years already. Kommersant's high-placed source in the Kremlin said that even if Russian government's decision about imposing export duties does contradict to some bilateral agreements with Belarus, Russia will rather revoke those agreements, and not the government's decision.

Russia pushes for paying part of the price for Russian gas by Beltransgaz's shares, after the company is estimated by independent audit firms trusted by Moscow, and not Minsk.

On the eve of Putin-Lukashenko meeting, two issues were taken off the agenda: the constitutional act and the transition to common currency. No new suggestions on either issue have appeared, thus there was no point in discussing them.

However, the talks ended without any result. Belarusian president did not manage to bargain down the new price of Russian natural gas for Belarus. The price is $200 for 1,000 cubic meters, and not a cent less.

Moreover, he received a refusal on all other major points on the talks' agenda. Thus, export duties on Russian oil supplied to Belarus will be neither canceled, not lowered.

However, Lukashenko could foresee such outcome of the talks. After all, it is him who does not want to give away Beltransgaz, and does not agree that the company is in fact worth less than he thinks. According to Kommersant's high-placed sources in the Kremlin, the price would be raised to $200 anyway.

Belarusian president thus had to pretend that the talks went well, and that he had reached agreement with his Russian counterpart, an agreement which will allow them to take Moscow-Minsk relations out of that dark abyss into which they fell thanks to long-term many-lateral efforts of all interested parties.

Perhaps, if Lukashenko had not pretended the negotiations were successful, no one would be surprised upon learning that Putin-Lukashenko joint dinner got cancelled, as well as their trip to the new ice-skating complex on Khodynskoe field in Moscow, which had been planned several days before the meeting.

The only thing that did not get cancelled was the traffic jams which paralyzed half of the city, because all ways to Khodynskoe field were blocked in the range of several kilometers.

Andrei Kolesnikov

Source:

http://www.kommersant.com/p730843/Vladimir_Putin_Alexander_Lukashenko/

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