Turkey opposes GdF pipeline role

Ankara: Turkey opposes Gaz de France's (GdF) inclusion in the Nabucco gas pipeline project over France's positions on Armenian genocide claims and Ankara's European Union bid, a senior energy official told Reuters on Wednesday.

His comments, reiterating Turkey's previously stated opposition, followed expressions of support from Romania's president and Hungarian firm MOL for GdF's involvement in the project that would bring Caspian gas to Europe.

The five billion-euro ($7.4 billion) pipeline is designed to pass via Turkey and the Balkans to Austria and is a key plank of the European Union's plans to reduce its dependence on Russian gas imports. It is planned for completion in 2012.

The Turkish official, who declined to be named, said in normal conditions Turkey would be glad to accept GdF as a partner given its experience and success in the energy sector.

"Turkey avoids using energy as a political instrument, it has no such aim," he said.

"But France has unacceptable positions on the incidents of 1915, which should be left to historians, and on the European Union and other joint projects."

Ankara has previously said it opposed Gaz de France's involvement in the project because of France's approval of a bill making it a crime to deny that Armenians suffered a genocide at the hands of Ottoman Turks in 1915-16.

Ankara denies the killings were a systematic genocide.

Turkey is also upset about French President Nicolas Sarkozy's opposition to Ankara's quest for EU membership.

Sarkozy says the EU cannot absorb Turkey, a relatively poor Muslim country with 70 million people, and says Brussels should instead negotiate a "privileged partnership."

The Nabucco consortium is equally owned by oil and gas companies in the transit countries - Austria's OMV, Hungary's MOL, Romania's Transgaz, Bulgaria's Bulgargaz and Turkey's Botas.

The Nabucco consortium on Tuesday confirmed German utility RWE will join the project.

The Turkish Energy Ministry official said six partners was enough for the project but that a seventh partner, from a gas-producing country, could join.

He said Turkey was in favour of Turkey's Botas constructing the pipelines as far as Ankara, from where Turkey wants the Nabucco project to begin. It could construct these pipelines in cooperation with other companies, he said.