Cheney: Balkanlanden horen bij EU, geen kritiek op oliestaat Kazachstan (en)

US vice president Dick Cheney has given his support for Croatia, Albania and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to join NATO and the EU.

Speaking at a summit in Croatia on Sunday (7 May) Mr Cheney said "it's very important - both for NATO and the EU - to take in new members, people who aspire to join the organization, help rejuvenate it."

Mr Cheney added that new members can "help us re-dedicate ourselves to those basic fundamental values of freedom and democracy that are a very important part of our collective security arrangements."

Membership of NATO and the EU are long term objectives for many Balkan countries, with the American support coming at a crucial time for the region, devastated by war just a decade ago.

The EU last week froze talks on a Stabilisation and Association agreement (SAA) with Serbia and Montenegro, which currently forms a state union, after Belgrade missed the deadline for handing over war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic to the UN war tribunal in The Hague.

Negotiations on the future of Kosovo, a province of Serbia now controlled by the United Nations, could lead to it becoming independent.

And in just two weeks (21 May) Montenegro will hold a referendum on whether to stay with Serbia or to also become independent.

Mr Cheney's visit to Croatia was the last stop of a European tour that also took him to Lithuania and Kazakhstan.

In Lithuania, the US vice-president delivered the Bush administration's strongest criticism of Russia to date, saying president Vladimir Putin's regime has "unfairly and improperly restricted the rights of her people" and accusing the Kremlin of turning oil and gas into "tools of intimidation or blackmail."

US president George Bush backed the comments, telling Germany's "Bild am Sonntag" over the weekend that Russia has in the past sent different signals that "raise the question, to what extent the country is committed to the goal of becoming a real democracy."

But the Russians are hitting back.

Russian energy minister Viktor Khristenko, writing in a comment published in the Financial Times (8 May), said his country is committed to democracy and to burying "Cold War era ghosts" at the G8 summit of industrialized nations in St. Petersburg in July.

"Russia has moved away from Soviet-era arrangements of subsidising energy prices to our neighbours and turned to market-based pricing mechanisms," Mr Khristenko writes.

"We are aware that old impressions fade slowly, but it is time for the west to recognise and acknowledge the maturing role and state of progress that Russia has achieved."

"Let us hope that this July, when the leaders of our fellow G8 countries come together...they will do so in the same spirit of serious dialogue and practical collaboration and not let our worthy goals be derailed by Cold War-era ghosts," he wrote.

The American vice-president also visited Kazakhstan for meetings with Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbaev. But Mr Cheney refrained from harsh commentary on the state of Kazakh democracy, Russian business paper Kommersant reported.

The US is keen to see the building of a pipeline along the Caspian Sea floor, which would make it possible to export gas from Kazakhstan through Turkey to Europe bypassing Russian infrastructure.

EU commissioner Andris Piebalgs was also in Kazakhstan last week to lobby for Kazakhstan's inclusion in the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum natural gas pipeline, according to Russian media.

It was the first time an EU energy commissioner has visited the country.

If the project, which the European Union is prepared to finance, is implemented, Russia will lose control of Caspian natural gas and Europe will have an alternative source of energy supplies.

Kazakhstan is an important gas producer and holds the largest recoverable oil reserves in the Caspian region - at least 95 billion barrels of oil.