5/16/2007

Poland, Lithuania hang veto threats over EU-Russia talks

Poland and Lithuania threatened Monday to block talks between the European Union and Russia because of unresolved trade disputes, while another Baltic state, Estonia, though steeped in a bitter row with Moscow called for the talks to go ahead.

Poland said it would maintain a veto imposed on the talks because Russia has not ended an embargo of Polish meat and other food products.

"Our veto is still current. Russia has not lifted its embargo, so we will not lift our veto," Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said Monday after holding talks with his Slovenian counterpart Janez Jensa.

Lithuania threatened to slap its own veto on the talks, due to begin in four days in the Russian Volga River city of Samara, unless Russia resumes the flow of oil to the Mazeikiu Nafta oil refinery in the north of the Baltic state.

"Without concrete, positive steps from the Russian side it would be premature to advance with the mandate" for a new partnership and cooperation agreement "at this stage," Lithuanian Foreign Minister Petras Vaitiekunas said.

The leak in the pipeline has forced the Mazeikiu refinery to ship in crude oil by sea, a more costly measure which has hurt profits.

Estonia, meanwhile, said that although it is the target of "hidden" sanctions imposed by Russia following a row over the removal of a Soviet war memorial from central Tallinn, the talks should not be blocked.

"We do not intend at the moment to veto the EU talks with Russia even though Moscow has launched a kind of economic blockade against Estonia," Foreign Minister Urmas Paet told AFP from Brussels, where he attended a meeting of EU foreign ministers on Monday.

"Talking is better than not talking," said Paet, who at the height of the row over the Bronze Soldier war memorial had called for the key EU-Russia talks to be postponed.

Estonian Railways warned Monday it could be forced to lay off staff if an unofficial trade blockade imposed by Russia continues.

Days after a row erupted at the end of last month between Tallinn and Moscow over the removal of the war memorial, the number of Russian cargo trains transiting through Estonia fell sharply.

Last week, the Russian authorities announced that heavy vehicles will be banned as of Tuesday from crossing the bridge that straddles the Narva River separating Estonia and Russia, officially to allow the span to undergo repairs.

Poland's gripe with Moscow stems from November 2005, when the Russians slapped an embargo on Polish meat and other foodstuffs, citing fraudulent safety and hygiene standards.

The Poles countered that Russia was playing politics because of differences with the conservative government in Warsaw.

In Lithuania, oil stopped flowing through the Druzhba-1 pipeline to Mazeikiu in July last year.

Moscow blamed the cut-off on a leak in the Soviet-era duct, but the Lithuanians suspected political reasons because the flow had stopped just weeks after Polish oil group PKN Orlen sealed a deal to buy the Mazeikiu complex from Russian oil giant Yukos.

Moscow was reportedly vexed by the sale of Mazeikiu -- which runs the only oil refinery in the Baltic states -- to a Polish group rather than a Russian one.

The talks in Samara between the EU and Russia are aimed at hammering out a new partnership and cooperation agreement covering a gamut of issues from energy and climate change to visa agreements and frozen conflicts.

Source: eubusiness.com



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