Transit, Gas, and Gold for GUUAM’s Sake
The planned course of the Tashkent negotiations between Utkir Sultanov, Prime Minister of Uzbekistan, and his Ukrainian counterpart, Viktor Yushchenko, took quite an unexpected turn when the Uzbek government head announced the possibility of increased natural gas supplies to Ukraine. Uzbek gas has in fact been supplied to Ukraine for the past two years. However, it has not so far been taken into account in Ukrainian gas schemes — perhaps due to some typically Ukrainian commercial practices. Nonetheless, even having struck a deal on Uzbek gas purchases, Ukraine runs the risk of not solving two problems: transporting the gas via Russian pipelines and paying for it.
Another unexpected Uzbek proposal during the talks was an initiative to set up in Ukraine a number of joint ventures to manufacture jewelry out of Uzbek gold (Uzbekistan annually extracts about 85 tons of gold which has hitherto never been exported to Ukraine). This might be better than waiting for the time when the first substantial batches of our own gold will be obtained.
Meanwhile, Kyiv and Tashkent seem to have decided what to do with old debts. More exactly, they have devised an absolutely non-market mechanism of non- monetary mutual settlement of debts incurred as a result of complementary production operations under the An-70 aircraft project, financial settlements between economic entities in 1992, and the division of rolling stock. The idea of mutual settlements is supported by Uzbek President Islam Karimov, Interfax-Ukraine reports.
Moreover, the Ukrainian delegation put on the Tashkent agenda a complaint that Uzbekistan had not met its commitments to supply agreed-upon quantities of cotton in exchange for the supplies of metallurgical and semi-finished items: according to the Ukrainian government, in 1999 Uzbekistan delivered about 3,000 tons of cotton to Ukraine, a considerably smaller figure than earlier agreed to. It was decided to solve all problems within a month according to a precise schedule.
Ukraine and Uzbekistan also think much more can be done in the transport sphere. The two parties intend soon to work out concrete decisions on the transit of Uzbek cargo across Ukraine and the participation of Ukrainian specialists in the construction of highways in Uzbekistan. After all, interest in the Euro-Asian transport corridor was not the least important reason why Uzbekistan joined GUUAM.
The Ukrainian side mooted a proposal to request Russia’s Prime Minister, Mikhail Kasianov, cut Russian railway fares on Uzbek freight bound for Ukraine. Incidentally, the tariffs levied on Baltic-bound cargo is just over half as high.
