Greece remains committed to Burgas-Alexandroupolis project

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ATHENS, June 12 (Itar-Tass) -- Greece remains committed to the plan
for laying the Burgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline, Greek government
spokesman Georgios Petalotis told reporters on Friday.
"The Greek side remains committed to the Burgas-Alexandroupolis oil
pipeline project and it keeps exerting efforts in this direction,"
Petalotis said in the wake of reports Bulgaria's attitude to the project
was very reserved.
The decision to lay the Burgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline was signed
by Russia, Greece and Bulgaria on March 15, 2007. The project envisages
the delivery of oil to Mediterranean terminals along a route bypassing the
Turkish straits of Bosporus and Dardanelles. The length of the pipeline
will be 285 kilometers and throughput, 35 million tonnes to 50 million
tonnes of crude a year. The construction costs are estimated at 1.5
billion euros. Greece wants the pipeline to match all modern environmental
protection requirements.

.No criticism from S Korea over Russian rocket engines-specialists.

MOSCOW, June 12 (Itar-Tass) -- South Korea has nothing critical to say
at this point about the performance of Russia-manufactured engines of its
rocket that was lost in an explosion shortly after liftoff earlier this
week, the chief designer of V.P. Glushko NPO Energomash industrial
association, Vladimir Chvanov, told Itar-Tass on Friday.
"According to our representatives in South Korea, there have been no
critical comments regarding the engine's performance yet," he said, adding
that "this information is preliminary and it should be further checked
on." Chvanov said any conclusions about what caused the breakdown would be
made only after telemetry studies.
The Russia-designed and manufactured first stage of South Korea's
space rocket Naro-1 was equipped with NPO Energomash engines.
NPO Energomash's assistant general director, Arthur Belyustov, told
Itar-Tass that according to information available from South Korea at this
point the rocket's loss was due to problems in its control system.
The South Korean space rocket Naro-1 exploded last Thursday at an
altitude of about 70 kilometers. Telemetry data stopped coming when the
rocket was 137 seconds into the flight and the first stage was still in
action. The same first stage is also the booster of Russia's new
generation carrier rocket Angara. The first launch in August 2009 ended in
failure due to a problem in the South Korea-made second stage.

.Ukraine determined to ease energy dependence - fuel minister.

KIEV, June 12 (Itar-Tass) -- Ukraine is determined to ease its
dependence on imported energy, the minister of fuel and energy, Yuri
Boiko, said on Friday.
"We have set ourselves some very ambitious goals - those of minimizing
the import of gas," Boiko told the Inter television channel. He stressed
Ukraine's guarantees the flow of Russian gas to Europe would continue
uninterrupted.
Boiko confirmed that Ukraine and Russia were in talks on ways of
stepping up cooperation in the gas sphere.
"We are ready to act together in any form that serves the national
interests and on a parity basis. This is so not only when it comes to gas.
It also concerns other spheres, in particular, nuclear power," Boiko said.
As he dwelt on the outlook for a merger of Gazprom and Naftogaz, Boiko
said that his country Ukrainian was studying the proposal very closely.

.Turkmen leader invites rival Afghan factions to Ashgabat for talks.

ASHGABAT, June 12 (Itar-Tass) -- Turkmenistan's President Gurbanguly
Berdimuhamedov has invited Afghanistan's rival factions to meet in
Ashgabat for talks.
"Turkmenistan is ready to offer its political space for UN-sponsored
inter-Afghan peace talks, as well as to provide the necessary conditions
for this process," Berdimuhamedov said at a meeting of the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization in Tashkent on Friday. His statement at the
meeting was published on the government's website.
"Turkmenistan is for a peace settlement in Afghanistan,"
Berdimuhamedov said. "This means the development of new political and
diplomatic mechanisms for resolving the Afghan problem."
He reiterated that "Turkmenistan will continue to assist the Afghan
people, first and foremost, in the humanitarian sphere, in the creation of
social infrastructures, and supplies of electricity and fuel, which will
be a concrete contribution to the economic development of Afghanistan."
In the mid-1990s Ashgabat played host to inter-Afghan talks once. It
was then that there emerged certain economic projects meeting the
interests of all factions, such as plans for delivering Turkmen gas to
Pakistan and India, as well as the construction of major high-voltage
power lines.

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