BRUSSELS, Nov 14: Nato advisers have warned that Russia may be seeking to create a gas cartel stretching from Algeria to central Asia to use as a political weapon in dealings with Europe, alliance sources said on Tuesday.

The warning of a Russian-backed “Opec for gas” came in a confidential report by Nato's economic committee presented to alliance nations last week.

Regular contacts already take place among gas exporting countries under the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) which was launched in May 2001. But energy ministers of the group, which straddles about two-thirds of the world's gas reserves, say the forum is a talking-shop and not a cartel in the making.

The report concluded that Russia, which supplies a quarter of Europe's gas, was aiming to draw Algeria, Libya, Qatar, the countries of central Asia and possibly Iran into a cartel wielding huge power over the gas market.

That would strengthen Moscow's hand in relations with

Europe and particularly with neighbours such as Ukraine and Georgia, which Moscow wants to dissuade from moving closer to Western bodies such as Nato and the European Union, the sources said.

“It quotes (Foreign Minister Sergei) Lavrov as saying as much in private meetings with other Russian officials,” said one alliance source who had seen the document, referring to the political power such a cartel could wield.

A Nato spokesman declined to comment on the report because it was confidential. The Financial Times first reported its existence in an article on Tuesday.—Reuters