Germany wants code of conduct for energy disputes

Germany wants to set up a formal dialogue and code of conduct for handling energy crises during the second half of its presidency of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations, a senior German official said.
Georg Boomgarden, a state secretary in the foreign ministry, said on Tuesday on the margins of a gas conference that Germany wanted G8 foreign ministers to discuss the new forum for mediating energy disputes when they meet in December.
Europeans have grown worried about Russia using energy as a political tool since it cut deliveries to Ukraine in early 2006 amid a price dispute and then clashed with Belarus over oil earlier this year.
"Planning for a dialogue between energy producer, consumer and transit countries is starting now on how to avoid conflicts and use arbitration along the lines of the mediation at World Trade Organisation level," Boomgarden said. "That will be one of the energy topics of the December meeting."
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier plans to host his G8 counterparts at a meeting in Berlin in early December at which energy issues will be at the top of the agenda. The main objective, Boomgarden said, was to seek ways of solving confrontations between countries and lay down ground rules in a code of conduct.
Germany is under pressure to ease the concerns of eastern European countries that are totally dependent on Russian energy by demonstrating it will not engage in an exclusive supply relationship with Moscow.
"We need a commmon understanding how to shape energy relations (among each other) in future," Boomgaarden said. Russia's state monopoly Gazprom supplies a quarter of Europe's gas needs. Germany, which holds the presidency of the G8 until the end of 2007, is heavily dependent on Russian energy.
Chancellor Angela Merkel had hoped to include ground rules on energy security in a new partnership agreement between the European Union and Russia, but talks on that pact have been delayed because of a Russian-Polish dispute over meat exports.
Boomgarden stressed that the need to avoid energy conflicts transcended arguments between Russia and its western neighbours, noting that Russia was looking at new outlets for its energy in Asia and that Africa and the Middle East were raising exports.