MOSCOW, May 28 (RIA Novosti) - The issue of Russia's energy supplies to Europe will be discussed at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, the deputy head of the EU delegation to Russia said.
Paul Vandoren told reporters during a TV link between Moscow and London, ‘Russia in the Modern World,' on Thursday that bilateral talks would start at the forum due to open on June 6.
The conference is being organized by RIA Novosti and Chatham House, formally known as the Royal Institute of International Affairs, under the auspices of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and the U.K.'s leading provider of professional services, KPMG.
The EU official said that negotiations over new agreements should become an ‘important platform' for the economic forum, adding that one of the key issues on the agenda will be EU guarantees for future purchases of Russia's energy supplies.
The 27-member bloc demand for energy resources is growing, Vandoren said, adding that it was also in EU interests to ‘look at other countries' which could become potential natural gas suppliers.
The official stressed that the main principle of the EU energy policy is ‘diversification of suppliers,' adding that it was made no sense to supply natural gas from Siberia to Central Europe.
Meanwhile, Tatiana Mitrova, who heads world market studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Energy Research Institute, said "all the preconditions for long-term mutually beneficial cooperation exist and the movement of Europe towards diversification of supplies is at a dead end."
