Belarus Seeks to Deal Direct With Ashgabat

When Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko visits Turkmenistan on June 17-19, gas is likely to be top of the agenda.



NBCentral Asia experts predict that Lukashenko will use his talks with Turkmen leader Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov to explore ways in which his country could forge separate arrangements for buying natural gas from the Central Asian state.



Turkmenistan is the source of half of Belarus’s total gas imports, but since it travels through Russia via pipelines owned by the energy giant Gazprom, it is Moscow that determines how much Minsk pays.



One option favoured by Belarus is a barter arrangement where it would supply farm machinery and other items in exchange for fuel. At the moment, Turkmenistan spends 30 to 40 million US dollars a year on Belarusian tractors and combine harvesters.



This is a rare visit – the last time Lukashenko was in Turkmenistan was in May 2002, when the late Saparmurat Niyazov was in power. Energy agreements discussed at that meeting never came to anything.