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Gas supplies unthreatened: Polish officials

22 June 2010 21:17 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. At the moment, the ongoing conflict between Minsk and Moscow does not have any influence on Poland, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Tuesday, APA reports quoting news.xinhuanet.com website.

Tusk told reporters that the Yamal gas pipeline was going both to Poland and other EU countries, so any move by Belarussians will cause a problem for Europe, and not only for Poland.

He added that the government was seeking other sources to ensure Poland’s energy security as Poland could not depend only on Russian gas.

Russia cut natural gas supplies to neighboring Belarus over what it claims is a debt of nearly 200 million U.S. dollars for previous gas shipments. Alexei Miller, chief of Russia’ s state- controlled Gazprom gas giant, said that the company decreased supplies by 30 percent starting Tuesday as Belarus has refused to pay the debt.

Belarus moved to cut the transit of Russian gas to Europe on Tuesday in a debt spat with Moscow, while President Alexander Lukashenko said the two countries faced a "gas war", an echo of Russia’s 2009 quarrel with Ukraine.