President Putin Of Russia To Pay A State Visit To Turkey

MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin of Russian Federation will pay a state visit to Turkey in September.
President Putin will become the first Russian president paying a state visit to Turkey after 32 years. Nikolay Podgorny, who served as titular head of former state of the Soviet Union, paid the highest level of visit to Turkey in 1973.
Although Moscow has not yet made any official statement about President Putin's visit to Turkey, President Putin is expected to leave for Turkey on September 2, 2004.
A proposed Turkish pipeline for Russian oil and energy cooperation between the two countries are the topics likely to be high on the agenda of President Putin's meetings in Ankara.
Mutual trade volume between Turkey and Russia, which had been just 200 million U.S. dollars 15 years ago, currently reached to 8 billion U.S. dollars.
''Blue Stream'' natural gas pipeline has further strengthen economic and commercial relations between the two countries. Moscow aims to extend the pipeline to Israel.
Also, Russia is the second country sending most tourists to Turkey after Germany.
Meanwhile, President Putin is expected to insist on the proposal about Russian-Israeli helicopters in the tender of the Turkish Armed Forces for attack helicopters.

-''TRANS-THRACIAN PIPELINE''-

The Moscow Times Newspaper, one of the dailies in Moscow published in English, said on Monday, ''when President Putin travels to Turkey next month, one of the topics likely to be high on the agenda will be a proposed Turkish pipeline for Russian oil. The project, known as the Trans-Thracian pipeline, would allow Russian oil to reach the Mediterranean from the Black Sea without passing through the congested Istanbul Strait. It already has the support of Transneft and the Ministry of Industry and Energy, and is awaiting approval from the Turkish Ministry of Energy.''
''Oil traffic through the Istanbul Strait has risen 30 percent to about 2.8 million barrels per day over the last two years, mainly from the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk. That figure is set to increase, as exports to the Black Sea via the Caspian Pipeline from Kazakhstan are set to grow to 67 million tons per year,'' it said.
''Also entering the Black Sea equation is an extra 9 million tons of oil per year that will flow through from Ukraine's Druzhba pipeline to the Black Sea. Under a deal worked out recently between TNK-BP and the Ukrainian government, the flow of the Odessa-Brody pipeline will be reversed to allow Russian exports to enter the Mediterranean, rather than Caspian exports joining the Druzhba line to Western Europe -- the pipeline's originally intended function,'' it said.
Pointing out that Turkey had made increasing complaints that the number of tankers going through the Istanbul Strait posed a significant environmental threat to Istanbul, the Moscow Times quoted Transneft Vice President Sergei Grigoryev as saying, ''the threat of ecological disaster in the straits is constantly hanging over the Turks.''
''Whatever the reason, passage for tankers through the straits has become more difficult over the past 18 months. First, the Turkish authorities stopped tankers going through at night, then imposed more demanding conditions for vessels passing through the straits. Occasionally, tanker traffic is halted altogether, as happened during the NATO summit in Istanbul in late June. They notified the Russian Foreign Ministry they'd be closing the straits just three days in advance. It's against all international treaties and obligations,'' Grigoryev claimed in an interview with the newspaper.
Recalling that the delays were souring Russian-Turkish political relations, the newspaper said, ''traffic through the straits has been a bone of contention between the two countries for many years. But the Trans-Thracian pipeline, from Kiyikoy on Turkey's western Black Sea coast, 193 kilometers south to Ibrikbaba on Turkey's Aegean coast, could significantly ease the bottleneck in the straits. The proposed pipeline would allow about 60 million tons per year, of Russian oil to reach the Mediterranean without passing through the straits. The Turkish government supports the idea, but does not want to commit to building or financing it.''
Meanwhile, London-based Center for Global Energy Studies analyst Julian Lee said in an interview with the Moscow Times, ''Turkey doesn't want to fall into the trap which Ukraine did with the Odessa-Brody project, of building a pipeline nobody wants to use. The government would rather see an international consortium take the project forward.''
(UK-AÖ) 17.08.2004