Scroeder: "We need more energy projects besides nabucco"

Europe needs Iran's natural gas, and so its policy towards Iran should be different from the US', said former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder yesterday. Addressing a meeting on energy in Istanbul, Schroeder, now working as an advisor to Russian energy giant Gazprom, said, "Besides the Nabucco project, we need different energy projects to transport Caspian natural gas to Europe via Turkey, but they shouldn't compete with each other." He called Turkey an energy bridge between Europe and Iran and Russia, two main energy-providing countries. Stating that by 2020 Europe's annual energy demand will total 200 billion cubic meters, he said the pipelines now being built will only meet 20 million cubic meters of this need. Touching on Turkey's Turkey’s European Union negotiation process and the foreign policy of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), he praised progress in EU membership talks and Turkey's mediation efforts between Syria and Israel, and between Russia and Georgia.