BERLIN, March 31 (RIA Novosti) - The European...
The EU and Ukraine signed an agreement last week on modernizing Ukraine's Soviet-era pipelines, triggering an angry reaction from Russia, which exports most of its Europe-bound gas via Ukraine. Moscow said the deal failed to take into account its interests.
"Ukraine is a sovereign state, but we are talking about a gas pipeline network that serves several countries, and Russia must definitely participate in this," Angela Merkel said at a joint news conference with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Berlin.
Merkel urged for negotiations between Russia and the EU to settle differences over the cooperation agreement with Kiev reached last Monday, and to "prevent a conflict" as "Russia is not happy at having been excluded from the talks."
The latest dispute has stirred fears in Europe of a repeat of January's dispute between Russia and Ukraine, when some EU consumers were left without gas for about two weeks.