A week after President Dmitry Medvedev's visited Ashgabat and Russian media gave a positive spin to his talks about the Turkmen-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline, the Turkmen Foreign Ministry has lashed out against Moscow's upbeat claims about the meeting.
According to a report from turkmenistan.ru, the Foreign Ministry issued a statement October 28, denying the Kremlin's version of the story of meetings between President Medvedev and President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov October 21-22. Ashgabat makes it clear in the frosty rebuttal that it has not endorsed Russia's participation in TAPI at all, and that any outside funders or contractors would be selected by the TAPI parties as a group.
Although Russian media portrayed both the Russia and Turkmen leaders agreeing to freeze the Prikaspiisky pipeline due to the current downturn in European demand, the Turkmen Foreign Ministry seems to take exception to this stark characterization, saying that Turkmenistan had already built its part of the pipeline -- and indicating that "apparently Russia does not wish to fulfill its commitments."
The Foreign Ministry's statement also addressed Russian Deputy Vice Premier Igor Sechin's dismissal of the Nabucco project as unworkable, and indicated that Ashgabat would pick and chose its partners and projects, including with Europe, as it pleased.
In particular, with reference to official persons of the Russian Federation, [the media] speaks about some "freezing" of the Prikaspiisky pipeline project, as well as a lack of prospects for Turkmenistan in cooperation in the Europe-oriented gas sector. At the same time, claims are made about the readiness of the Russian companies to "hook up" with implementation of the TAPI gas pipeline project.