Russian and Ukrainian Prime Ministers to discuss gas consortium

The Prime Ministers of Russia and Ukraine will discuss the creation of agas consortium for managing the Ukrainian gas transportation system inMoscow on August 16, 2002. As the press service of the Ukrainian governmentreported to RBC, the parties will submit for discussion their versions of adocument on the creation of the consortium. As it was previously reported,at a recent meeting of Russian President Vladimir Putin and UkrainianPresident Leonid Kuchma, the parties agreed to sign Russian-Ukrainiandocuments on creating the gas consortium on October 7, 2002. This concernsa joint government agreement on strategic collaboration in the gas industryand an inter-corporate document between the Gazprom gas holding (Russia)and the Naftogaz gas company (Ukraine).German Chancellor Gerhard Shroeder stated that Germany might join thisconsortium..