BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

27/12/2006

Pavel Borodin: Gas Price Will Be Decided On This Year

State Secretary of the Union State of Russia and Belarus Pavel Borodin told Kommersant correspondent Vladimir Solovyev what he thinks about the Russian-Belarusian gas war.

Has Gazprom's ultimatum to Minsk made your life harder?

In principle, it's not my issue. We have a union agreement and production programs that we discuss. Social question, the movement of capital and people. Gas prices have nothing to do with interstate affairs I am engaged in:

Everyone is taking the intercorporate conflict as the final divorce.

I don't think it is. We have a competent president. He was with Lukashenko for a seven-hour session to come to an agreement. They'll reach an agreement now.

Why make such a fuss over gas with your closest ally?

Lukashenko wanted to know why you don't raise gas prices inside Russia if you're raining them for us. He in fact repeated the question the Americans once asked our giant of economic thought [Minister of economic Development and Trade German] Gref. At WTO negotiations, they asked how you can enter the WTO when your internal price for gas is $30 per 1000 cu. m. and the export price is ten times more. Therefore, I think that, if we are talking about raising gas prices for the CIS and union state to market level, we have to raise the domestic price as well. Our great economists and financiers today have an unrealistic, and I would even say idiotic, price policy.

A year ago there was such a gas war with Ukraine. It ended with the triumphant return of pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovich to power and now Moscow and Kiev have full mutual understanding. Maybe Moscow is using a well-developed approach against Minsk.

Our leadership is not pursuing political goals. We have already prepared a constitutional act for the union of Russia and Belarus: The union with Belarus is the first step in restoring the post-Soviet space in the economic sense, not the political. The price of gas will be decided on before the end of the year.

Does the Belarusian side want to reach an agreement?

It will have to re ach an agreement. We are all Slavs. The Armenians, Georgians, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Belarusians, Russians, Evens, Evenki, Chukchee - we are all Slaves. We have been living together for more than a thousand years. So we'll reach an agreement.

Do you think that the current gas ultimatum will warm the desire of the Belarusians to live together with Russia?

Our peoples and our presidents are un favor of the union state. We don't have jerks at the head of our states now:

So you think there are no jerks at the head of the states, but the jerks are in some of the state monopolies?

You could say that. They are not even jerks, but simply guys who really love money.

Interview by Vladimir Solovyev

Source:

http://www.kommersant.com/p733395/r_529/Russia_Belarus_union_state_natural_gas_prices/