Putin to attend Balkan energy summit

Russian President Vladimir Putin is to visit Croatia on Sunday to attend a summit on the future of energy in south-eastern Europe along with eight counterparts from the region.
"The summit's aim is for regional officials to express their views on actual problems of energy and the supply of energy," Croatian President Stipe Mesic, who organised the Zagreb gathering, said in a statement.
No agreement is expected to be adopted at the meeting, which will also be attended by the presidents of Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania and Serbia. Greece is to be represented by a deputy minister, while the European Commission will monitor the event.
"The supply of energy is so vital that it is difficult to separate it from economic, political or social aspects of a modern society," said Zagreb University professor Radovan Vukadinovic.
"Putin's presence in Zagreb actually confirms the importance of the issue. Russia is today one of the main (energy) suppliers for Western Europe and other countries," Vukadinovic, an international relations expert, told AFP. The summit comes a month after Zagreb and Budapest pledged to intensify cooperation on the construction of a gas terminal at a Croatian port that would help to diversify Europe's energy sources.
Croatia and Hungary are considering jointly constructing a gas pipeline from the Adriatic Sea to mainland Europe in order to decrease reliance on Russian gas. The project requires the construction of an LNG terminal that could receive tankers from around the world and transport gas via pipelines to central and western Europe. The European Union, which relies heavily on Russian gas imports, has been trying to broaden its sources of energy after suffering supply disruptions during the past two years.
Under another regional energy project backed by the European Union, a 1,300-kilometre (800-mile) pipeline is being planned to link the Romanian Black Sea port of Constanta and the Italian Adriatic port of Trieste running through Romania, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Italy. The five countries pledged in April to boost cooperation on the project to build the so-called Pan-European Pipeline (PEOP).