A looming battle between Russia and Belarus was on hold Friday, with officials in both countries announcing gas supplies to Europe would flow interrupted despite the dispute, DPA reported. Gazprom, the Russian natural gas monopolist, had threatened to reduce volumes delivered to Belarus by 55 per cent as of Friday, because Minsk had not paid the previous six months' gas bill in full. The conflict had threatened to spike fuel prices in Europe, as some 25 per cent of all Russian natural gas sold to Europe travels to markets via Belarusian pipelines. Deliveries would nonetheless continue in full for the time being, Gazprom officials in Moscow said, only hours after a 10 a.m. Moscow time deadline had passed. Gas supply from Russia were uninterrupted on Friday, and volumes travelling to Europe were unchanged, officials from the Belarusian natural gas transport company Beltransgaz said in Minsk. Belarus avoided the cut-off by paying Gazprom in the early hours of Friday 190 million dollars of an outstanding 464 million dollar debt, the Interfax news agency reported. Aleksander Lukashenko, Belarus authoritarian leader, on Thursday announced his government would pay off the debt by the end of August using credits supplied by Venezuela, and possibly European loan institutions. EU officials throughout the week had described the situation as "worrying," and called on the two sides to resolve their differences peacefully.
