Estonia has no plans for talks with Russia to allow Nord Stream AG to conduct seabed research in its territorial waters, an Estonian government official said Monday denying Russian media reports, according to dpa. "The decision has been made already. We're not in negotiation regarding Nord Stream," press secretary for Estonia's foreign ministry Lauri Matsulevits told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa on Monday. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Finnish President Tarja Halonen met for talks on Sunday in Moscow. Finnish media reported that the gas pipeline project was one of the topics discussed. Finland may serve as the middle man in Russian negotiations on Nord Stream with Estonia, the Russian newspaper RBK Daily reported Monday citing unnamed sources. Russia is interested in building the underwater gas pipeline to transport its gas from Russia directly to Germany and other Western European countries, upsetting the Baltic states and Poland. In September, the Estonian government denied Nord Stream AG's request to carry out a seabed survey in Estonian waters needed for the construction of gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea. "I was the one who once proposed that the shore on the Estonian side should be examined, as it is safer. So now the other option is being examined", Halonen said, according to Helsingin Sanomat. Finland does not have "mystically negative suspicions" about the Russian-German project, she said, adding that the environmental assessment "needs to be proper and serious". Estonia could allow a survey of the seabed in exchange for lifting the unofficial transit embargo from Russia, said Aleksei Mukhin, director of the Centre of Political Information. In response to the Estonian government's decision to relocate a Soviet-era World War II monument in April, Russia unofficially minimized its use of Estonian railroads to haul its goods. In July, Nord Stream AG, the German-Russian joint venture, requested the small Baltic European Union country's permission to carry out seabed surveys in the Estonian economic zone of the Baltic Sea after Finnish authorities asked for the original route to be moved further south. Estonia denied access, so the pipeline will have to go through Finnish waters, as it was originally planned. The controversial 1,200 kilometre Nord Stream pipeline is due to take Russian gas under the Baltic Sea to Western Europe. Russian gas monopolist Gazprom and Germany's BASF and E.ON hold stakes in the enterprise. With an estimated cost of 5 billion euros (7 billion dollars), the pipeline is planned to pump 27.5 billion cubic metres of gas a year, starting in 2010.
