President Gul Hosts Dinner In Honor Of His Bulgarian Counterpart

ANKARA - Turkish President Abdullah Gul hosted a dinner in honor of Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov, who is visiting Turkey, in Ankara on Tuesday.
Gul said Turkey and Bulgaria had solidarity and partnership in significant regional cooperation processes and Turkey's EU accession process would contribute to the relations.
Turkey always became an inseparable part of history, political and cultural geography of Europe and strategic depth to be provided by Turkey would enable EU to have a global role, he said.
In his part, Parvanov said recent visits between officials of the two countries showed that the neighbourly relations were gaining momentum.
He said Bulgaria was Turkey's biggest trade partner in the Southeast Europe also noting that Turkish investors played an important role in Bulgaria.
Parvanov said energy security was an important issue and pointed out that the inter dependence between energy producing countries, transit countries and consumers should be acknowledged.

-NABUCCO PROJECT-
Turkish President Gul said that the most important issue regarding the Nabucco project was to obtain enough natural gas.
Replying to a question on Nabucco project during a joint press conference held by Gul and Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov, Gul said, "the most important issue regarding the Nabucco project is to obtain enough natural gas. We think of Caucasus, Caspian and Central Asia. But there are some problems. Turkey can also obtain gas from other directions."
The 3,300-kilometer Nabucco project is a planned natural gas pipeline that will transport natural gas from Turkey to Austria, via Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary. It will run from Erzurum in Turkey to Baumgarten an der March, a major natural gas hub in Austria.
Around 30 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year will be transported to Europe after the Nabucco project is completed.
Turkish energy officials said EU and Turkey could sign a transit deal by the end of this year, and the EU attached great importance to the project as EU leaders did not want to be energy dependent on Russia.
The Nabucco project is also supported by the United States as it would be an alternative to natural gas supply from Russia, biggest supplier of Europe.
(OZG-EÖ)
(DIP)