Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Sunday that energy supplies should not be used as a means to threaten his country, reports from Minsk said.

Although Belarus does not produce petroleum and natural gas, other countries should not use energy supplies to threaten the Belarussian people, Lukashenko told a religious gathering in the capital.

Russian gas giant Gazprom and Belarus signed an agreement on gas supplies to the country in 2007 during talks at the end of 2006, averting a threatened gas cutoff to Belarus.

Belarus would buy gas at 100 U.S. dollars per 1,000 cubic meters in 2007, more than doubling what Belarus had paid for Russian gas in the past year.

Meanwhile, charges for Russian gas transit through Belarus to Europe would also rise to 1.45 dollars per 1,000 cubic meters for every 100 km from the 0.75 dollars Gazprom previously paid.

Russia, the world's biggest gas producer, supplies around a quarter of Europe's gas, around 20 percent of which transits through Belarus, most of it to Germany, Poland and Lithuania.

Source: Xinhua