MOSCOW, Dec 24: Russia promised on Friday that it would maintain natural gas supply to European countries despite a bitter price dispute with Ukraine where pipelines that deliver the gas to Europe are located.

In the interest Europe’s energy security and economic cooperation on the continent as a whole, Russia will rigorously fulfill all agreements and contracts with its Western partners concerning deliveries of Russian natural gas, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The statement was released to media hours after Ukraine said it was making preparations to take the gas pricing dispute with Russia to an international arbitration panel in Stockholm.

Russian state-controlled gas giant Gazprom has said it plans to charge Ukraine for gas supply at world market rates instead of the barter system under which Russia provides cheap gas to Ukraine in exchange for use of the pipeline network on Ukrainian territory for exports to western Europe.

In the statement, foreign ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said Moscow had repeatedly urged Ukraine not to “politicize” the gas pricing dispute.

A meeting on the issue between Ukrainian Prime Minister Yury Yekhanurov and several Western ambassadors in Kiev appeared to be an effort to do just that and to take the issue beyond the confines of a bilateral commercial negotiation, the statement said.

It added that Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko last March said he wanted Russian-Ukrainian gas trade to be governed by free market rules, a position the Russian government supported, and that the talks under way at present were aimed at doing that.

Separately, Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov said Ukrainian authorities had no legal basis to demand that Russia continue to provide gas at rates far below those paid by other countries.

The Ukrainian side has no legal basis to demand the maintenance in 2006 of current terms for delivery and transit of Russian gas, Kupriyanov was quoted by RIA-Novosti news agency as saying.

Ukraine has said it is ready to pay market rates for gas in the future, but wants to see the price raised gradually, over a period of several years.

Gazprom has threatened to cut off gas supply to Ukraine entirely if a market-based agreement on a new pricing structure is not reached by the end of the year, a threat repeated Friday.

“If there isn’t a (new) contract, there won’t be deliveries,” Alexander Medvedev, the chief of Gazprom’s export arm, told reporters in Moscow.—AFP