CIS presidents to meet at Krakow’s Wawel Castle for energy summit

The Chancellery of President Ka-czynski announced earlier this month that the presidents of Georgia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Poland were expected to meet on May 11-12 at the Wawel Royal Castle to discuss the oil transfer policies through their territories.

Transportation of the Caspian Sea energy resources to Western Europe and the Odessa-Brody-Gdansk pipeline project were to be the main topics of discussion.
However, according to the latest information of Gazeta Wyborcza, Kazakhstan President Nursulan Nazarbayev will not come to Poland, because the Russian President Vladimir Putin has scheduled a simultaneous official visit to the Republic of Kazakhstan. After this visit a tripartite summit meeting (Russian-Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan) is planned in Turkmenistan.

RK MFA (Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan) representative Erzhan Ashykbayev announced during the traditional briefing held in Astana that Vladimir Putin will visit Kazakhstan on May 10, reports Kazakhstan Today.  He stated that the visit will last 1 day, but the official website of Rus  President Putin announced that the head of state will visit Astana on May 9-10 and Aktau on May 12-15.

?During the visit the parties will discuss perspectives for further cooperation of our countries practically in all spheres of bilateral interaction,? said Ashykbayev.
In particular, according to the RK MAF representative, questions of joint space development, nuclear energy, transport, and fuel and energy complexes will be discussed.

Answering journalists? questions about a possible trilateral (Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkmenistan) meeting on cooperation in the energy sphere during Putin?s visit to Kazakhstan, Erzhan Ashykbayev said that ?such a meeting is in the plans.?
As announced on the Kremlin?s Internet site, the Russian President will visit the cities of Ashkhabad and Turkmenbashi in Turkmenistan on May 10-12. The trilateral meeting is planned in Turkmenbashi.

Media is speculating that Putin and Nazarbayev will try to convince the new Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov to build a gas main from Central Asia to Russia.

This year, Turkmenistan is planning to increase its gas exports by a quarter — up to 58 billion cubic meters – and wants to diversify its routes. Currently, the only existing export routes for its gas are Gazprom pipelines and a low-capacity line to Iran. It is vital for Moscow to keep control over Turkmen gas supplies. To do so, it could provide its partner with more transit capacity, according to RIA Novosti.

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