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Lithuania to Respond by Repair for Repair
Lithuanian Foreign Ministry has warned the RF embassy they can respond by the so-called repair of railways to the so-called repair of Druzhba oil pipeline, which blocked crude oil supplies to Mazeikiu Nafta refinery.
Lithuania may set to repairing facilities of its railway Lietuvos Gelezinkeliai, Foreign Ministry’s Secretary Albinas Januska told Dmitry Tsvetkov, charge d’affaires of Russia’s embassy in Vilnius Friday. Januska made clear Lithuania is eyeing crude oil supplies to Mazeikiu Nafta (MN) along with the repair of Druzhba pipeline near the border of Russia and Belarus (crude deliveries to Lithuania stopped July 29). According to Januska, Lithuania hopes the repair will end soon, otherwise they may start repairing the railway between the border of Belarus and Lithuania and the border of Lithuania and Russia.
There could be no way to rebuild the 40-year oil pipeline, Transneft CEO Semen Vainshtok said in August, while Russia's Federal Service for Supervising Natural Resources called the facility dangerous for operation.
But Lithuania traces political background in the repair, viewing the delay as revenge for selling MN to Polish PKN Orlen.
The counteraction could be the railway restrictions imposed by Lietuvos Gelezinkeliai for railway carriage via the Kaliningrad Region. It will mostly affect the shipment of military product from Russia, as this type of the cargo is handled under the rules applied to hazardous goods, and therefore, is the first to suffer restrictions in case of repair.
Lithuania has always rejected all attempts of the Kremlin to enter into a new interstate agreement on the military transit, preferring to prolong the transit contract once a year. Under the laws of Lithuania, the military transit requires the sanction of the country’s parliament and intermediary efforts of the United Nations or any other organization of which Lithuania is a member, NATO, for instance.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Aug. 21, 2006
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