President calls Southern, Northern gas flow projects political

Speaking in interview with Russia's Echo of Moscow radio, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko called as inadequate the sharp reaction of the Russian leadership to the Ukraine - European Union declaration on the gas transportation system modernization.

Yushchenko reminded that, according to Ukrainian laws, Ukraine's gas transportation system may be only state-owned. "Why does not this fact please Russia as the natural gas producer? We clearly say that this is our home affair, that the status of this system does not change, and we are not out to revise it today," an UKRINFORM correspondent in the Russian Federation quoted the President as saying.

Yushchenko says that Russia, supplying 82% of its gas to Europe through Ukraine's gas transportation system, cannot refuse from this route. The more so that currently the design capacity of Ukraine's gas transportation system makes it possible to pump 30-40 billion cubic meters of gas a year more. He exemplified the Bohorodchany - Uzhhorod gas pipeline, which "may pump extra 60-80 billion cubic meters of gas".

Meanwhile, Yushchenko noted, this variant costs "about ten times less" than the Northern Flow project, which is so much spoken of now.

In this connection the President called the projects of both the Northern and Southern flows as political rather than economical. From his point of view, projects like those are not very popular in Europe, which is willing to form the ideology of a common wholesale gas market.

"We must have clear economic rather than political principles," Viktor Yushchenko underscored.

UKRINFORM