Moscow rejects Polish pipeline proposal: report

(MOSCOW) - A senior Kremlin official on Thursday rejected a proposal by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk for an alternative to a controversial Russian gas pipeline under the Baltic, RIA Novosti news agency reported on the eve of a visit to Moscow by Tusk.

"From an economic point of view the project is very difficult and much more costly" than the Russian-backed Nord Stream pipeline, presidential aide Sergei Prikhodko was quoted as saying. "It is not very profitable or acceptable."

Tusk was due to present the plan during a Friday visit to Moscow, his first since taking office in November, his economic ministry said last week.

The Polish proposal, dubbed the Amber pipeline, would run through Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania as well as Poland, RIA Novosti reported.

Prikhodko said the number of countries involved was one of its drawbacks.

Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania vehemently oppose the seabed route from Russia to Germany planned by Russian energy titan Gazprom and Germany's EON and BASF.

Poland's previous conservative-nationalist government regularly slammed the project, and while Tusk has pledged to rebuild ties with Moscow after years of bad blood, he has not indicated that Warsaw will drop its opposition.

Among the fears expressed by the four countries is that opting for an underwater rather than a land route will enable Gazprom to cut off supplies to them without hurting its Western European customers.

Russia has regularly been accused of using Gazprom's control of a hefty slice of Europe's gas market for political ends, allegedly turning off the taps to punish governments in Moscow's communist-era stamping ground that fail to toe the Kremlin's line.

The Baltic Sea countries Finland and Sweden have focused on environmental concerns, but a number of other western European nations have praised the Nord Stream pipeline, which is meant to begin pumping natural gas 1,200 kilometres (740 miles) from Vyborg in Russia to Greifswald in Germany as of 2011.