The following are excerpts from a report broadcast by Turkmen TV on 11.
April: Ukraine's president, Leonid Kuchma arrived in Turkmenistan today on a working visit. Turkmenistan's officials welcomed him at Turkmenbasy town airport. He then went to a reception in his honour.
President Saparmurat Turkmenbasy [Nyazow] the Great and Leonid Kuchma then held a private meeting in the Serdar Hotel. After discussing the current state of Turkmen-Ukrainian bilateral relations, the two leaders acknowledged the potential to boost them. They also discussed some other aspects of bilateral relations.
Afterwards, both leaders addressed reporters. Nyazow, in Russian: "We see Ukraine as a reliable market [for Turkmen gas], and Russian markets are also favor us. Both Ukraine and Russia have a huge demand for Turkmen oil and gas products. Our interests fully coincide in this issue. President Putin supports the initiative to hold a meeting of the three presidents in St Petersburg on 28-29 May [2003]. Meanwhile, we have to draw up a draft tripartite agreement on the use of Turkmen gas by both Ukraine and Russia for the next 25 years, i.e. until 2028. Everything should be done not to harm interests of either Ukraine or Russia and to have equal and mutually advantageous cooperation. If our three states could manage jointly to lay a gas pipeline [in western Turkmenistan] with a capacity of some 30-40 billion m³ [of gas per year] then the two gas pipelines, one from northeastern Turkmenistan via Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to Aleksandrov Gay [in southern Russia] and on to the Ukraine, and the second from [western] Turkmenistan along the Caspian Sea coast to Russia and Ukraine, would be sufficient to meet the demands of all states currently participating in our [gas] accord... In order to discuss these issues once more, I invited President Kuchma to pay an official visit [to Turkmenistan] this October. Prior to it, experts from Russia and Ukraine should be given the task of determining our countries' exact demands for fuel and energy over the next 25 years.
In the past, we all were forced to co-exist within the USSR. There was much mischief and many infringements of our national interests. All this is now past history, but bearing it in mind, we cannot turn the clock back. Yesterday I said this to Putin. He too showed no enthusiasm for the restoration of the USSR. As he said, there are good methods of economic cooperation, which benefit us all."
