29 July 2007
Russian vice premier confident of settlement of Belarus' gas debt issue
Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev expressed certainty that the issue of Belarus' outstanding debt for Russian gas supplies would be "settled on economic principles in the near future."
"Belarus has a debt, there's nothing dramatic about this. Talks are underway and there're a number of proposals," the ITAR-TASS news agency quoted him as saying on July 27.
The vice premier would not elaborate on what proposals he was talking about but expressed hope that "this knot will be undone in the near future."
Mr. Medvedev said that Moscow had done much to secure "more rational and economically effective trade relations" with ex-Soviet countries.
Belarusian Prime Minister Syarhey Sidorski and his Russian counterpart, Mikhail Fradkov, are to meet in Moscow on July 30 to discuss Belarus' gas debt. Belarusian Energy Minister Alyaksandr Azyarets and Valery Golubev, deputy chairman of Gazprom's board, began talks on the matter in Moscow on July 23. The talks continued in Minsk on July 25 but ended in a failure.
Under a contract signed on December 31, 2006 between the Belarusian government and the Russian natural gas giant, Belarus has to pay $100 for 1,000 cubic meters in 2007 compared with $46.68 in the previous two and a half years. However, Gazprom allowed Belarus to pay 55 percent of the contractual price in the first six months of 2007 and Minsk promised to pay off the accumulated debt by July 23. Belarus ran into a $450-million debt but failed to repay it by the date.
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