BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

09/01/2007

German BND to investigate reasons of oil pipeline shut down

Russia said yesterday it had been forced to shut down Druzhba pipeline because Belarus was siphoning off oil to secure payment in kind for a transit tariff Minsk imposed last week. The closure of the 4,000 km pipeline, one of Europe's biggest, meant no Russian oil was being pumped along it to Germany, Poland or Ukraine. German foreign intelligence service (Bundesnachrichtendienst, BND) has promised to clear out the reasons of a suspension of supply of the Russian oil, online edition of the German weekly Der Spiegel reports.

The country's foreign intelligence service chief Ernst Uhrlau will be respondible for carrying out the assignment of Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel, according to the magazine. , Uhrlau id quoted by the weekly as saying.

Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, told The Times last night that Germany will use its six-month EU presidency to improve energy security on the Continent. In her first interview with a British newspaper she signalled that she would take a harsher line towards Russia than her predecessor, Gerhard Schroder, who is now on the board of a German-Russian consortium constructing a gas pipeline linking Russian gasfields with Western Europe.

Source:

http://www.axisglobe.com/article.asp?article=1187