KIEV — Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko on Thursday urged President Dmitry Medvedev to change an agreement on supplies of Russian natural gas, saying the terms were too onerous for the Ukrainian economy.
In a move that appeared designed to embarrass his political rival, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, as she prepared for gas talks with Moscow, Yushchenko said an existing agreement on gas deliveries to Ukraine needed "urgent revision."
In an open letter to the Kremlin leader published on his web site, Yushchenko said, "Keeping the contracts unchanged ... will create potential threats specifically to the reliability of supplies of gas to Ukraine and its transit to other European states.
"It is obvious that such a development of events is not welcome either for Ukraine or for Russia and the European Union," he said.
Tymoshenko is due later on Thursday to meet Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in Yalta, southern Ukraine, for talks that analysts will monitor for signs of whether there could be another end-of-year dispute affecting Russian gas supplies across Ukraine to Europe.
The agreement referred to by Yushchenko was reached between Ukraine's Naftogaz and the national gas monopoly Gazprom in January, and ended a financial dispute between the two countries that affected supplies to Europe.
Russian gas supplies to Europe via Ukraine, a route that supplies a fifth of Europe's gas, were halted for more than two weeks at the start of the year because of the quarrel over prices and payment terms. Millions of people in southern Europe were left without heating.
Eighty percent of exported Russian gas transits Ukraine to European markets.
Tymoshenko, who is running against Yushchenko in a presidential election on Jan. 17, says the gas agreement that she brokered with Putin is a good one and does not need to be revised.
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