Leaders from five European and Caspian Sea nations agreed on Saturday to work together on energy security issues and on a possible extension to Poland of a pipeline carrying Caspian oil. Polish President Lech Kaczynski, who met in Krakow with his counterparts from Lithuania, Ukraine, Georgia and Azerbaijan to discuss ways of lessening Russian dominance in oil and gas supplies, declared the gathering a success. «We have become much closer on the political level,» he said, according to AP. The absence of Kazakhstan's president _ who stayed in Central Asia for energy talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin _ underlined the difficulties of bypassing Russia. The five leaders agreed that their countries would form a working group to pursue issues of joint energy security. They also called for a group to be set up to plan an extension of the Odessa-Brody pipeline through Ukraine to bring Caspian Sea oil to a refinery in Plock, Poland and on to the Baltic Sea port of Gdansk, to be ready in about 2012. -- SPA
