Putin intends to review relations with Belarus

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has tasked the head of the Finance Ministry Aleksei Kudrin to prepare financial agenda for a possible meeting with the Prime Minister of Belarus.

“My Belarusian counterpart and I will hold a meeting soon,” Vladimir Putin said addressing Kudrin at the session of the Presidium of the Government of Russia on August 4.

He underlined that the forthcoming meeting requires a careful preparation. “We will touch upon energy and financial issues. A possibility of providing Belarus with an additional credit is also being considered,” Vladimir Putin said.

He asked Alexei Kudrin, Russian Vice-Premier and Finance Minister, “to study the issue in a comprehensive manner and prepare a report”.

As the Charter’97 press-centre has informed, Belarus demand to change the formula of the gas price sold to the country by Gazprom. On Friday at a press-conference in Minsk first vice Prime Minister of Belarus Uladzimir Syamashka stated that government of the country finds it necessary to alter the agreement with Russia on prices for gas delivered to the country in connection with the growth of world oil prices.

“When signing that agreement (on December 31, 2006) we rested upon a Russian forecast of oil price changes which envisaged its lowering,” the official said. “As long as both Russian and Belarusian Civil Codes contain articles allowing dissolving an agreement in connection with substantial change of situation, and we offer to start negotiations and either to dissolve an agreement, which is unwarrantable, or to find a civilized solution”. For the first time Syamashka officially stated the current cost of gas for Belarus: “In the beginning of 2008 the gas price for Belarus was $119 per 1,000 cubic metres, and now we have passed to the cost $127.9 by the end of the year”. In 2009 the country expects great price hike (gas), and a cost formula for it depends on world oil and petroleum products’ price quotations.