From the Guardian (UK) (Feb 23, 2008):

The Bush administration yesterday urged the EU to stop dithering over the building of a $6bn (£3bn) gas pipeline from the Caspian basin to central Europe and reduce its growing dependence on Russia’s Gazprom.

“Follow your wallet,” Matthew Bryza, US deputy assistant secretary of state, said, arguing that the troubled Nabucco project made sound commercial sense and would cut Europe’s dependence on Gazprom by up to a quarter.

Bryza’s outspoken comments came after talks with senior EU officials, including energy commissioner Andris Piebalgs, and took sideswipes at the “gigantic rents” [excessive prices] Gazprom is charging Europe for gas. They underline the growing geo-political importance of gas.

“Helping Europe diversify its gas supplies has become extremely urgent,” said Bryza, adding that US backing for Nabucco was in the country’s national interests even though no American companies are involved….

“We want to help Gazprom to move from a monopoly towards more market-based behaviour,” he said. “We want it to be reliable and produce more gas at home in a more competitive domestic market rather than buying up as much infrastructure here in Europe or the cheapest possible gas it can find in Central Asia.”

Related Article: U.S. official says Europe needs alternatives to Russian natural gas, Associated Press, 22 February 2008.

The clashing views of Moscow and Washington about the future of Kosovo were laid out powerfully and clearly in a recent semi-public exchange between two well-placed individuals on opposite sides of the argument. Dimitri K. Simes, a scholar specialized in the affairs of his native Russia, who now heads the Nixon Center in Washington. Ambassador Frank G. Wisner, the U.S. special representative to the talks on Kosovo’s future headed by United Nations envoy, Martti Ahtissari.

Their dialogue of articles and letters was circulated by the Committee for the Republic, an informal circle of policy intellectuals in Washington. One of the circle’s members is former U.S. Ambassador Chas Freeman to whom some of the correspondence was addressed. European Affairs found it a clarifying account of the fundamental arguments on both sides. (more…)