Prague - The European Union on Friday signed a deal with Egypt, Georgia, Turkey and Azerbaijan aimed at clearing the way for the construction of new energy pipelines independent of Russian supplies. "We have to diversify ... The EU believes that we should go beyond diversifying our routes to diversifying our sources," said Czech premier Mirek Topolanek, who hosted the summit in Prague.
The meeting brought together top politicians from the EU, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Georgia and Turkey, along with senior officials from Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, and observers from Russia, Ukraine and the United States.
EU leaders called the agreement signed with the four partner countries a major milestone on the way to reducing the EU's reliance on Russia, which currently supplies a quarter of all the natural gas and oil burned in the bloc.
In particular, the summit gave a much-needed boost to the EU's flagship pipeline project "Nabucco," which is intended to bring gas from the Caspian Sea across Turkey to Europe, when Turkey agreed to seal a deal on its transit rules by the end of June.
But in a watering-down of original proposals, the summit stopped short of calling for a multilateral "corridor agreement" which would have seen the countries involved sharing energy transit fees as well as financing and expertise.
Instead, it called for unspecified "transit and environmental arrangements," with no mention of an over-arching deal.
Questions also hung over the attitude of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, who attended the summit as full participants, but who did not sign the final declaration.
The head of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, said that he "never expected that those countries would sign."
But Czech diplomats told the German Press Agency
