Russian Patriarch to attend world religious summit in Baku.

MOSCOW, April 24 (Itar-Tass) - Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia
Kirill leaves for the Azerbaijani capital Baku Saturday to attend the
World Religious Summit, which is due to begin Monday.
He will spend the two days preceding the summit examining the life of
the Russian Orthodox community in Azerbaijan. Also, he will take part in a
session of the CIS Inter-Religious Council.
Sunday, April 25, Patriarch Kirill is expected to lead a festive
liturgy in the metropolitan cathedral in Baku on the occasion of the Day
of the Holy Myrrh-Bearing Women.
The opening of the summit of world spiritual leaders is scheduled for
Monday, April 26.
The top-rank religious conference will be held in Gulistan Palace. It
will be co-chaired by His Holiness Kirill and the spiritual leader of the
Islamic Religious Department of the Caucasus, Sheikh ul-Islam Allahsukur
Pasazada.
"Globalization and its impact on religion and traditional values is
the main issue of the summit," the Reverend Vsevolod Chaplin, the chief of
the Russian Church's department for communications with society said
Friday.
All the four major religious denominations present in Russia - Eastern
Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism - will be represented at
the Baku summit.
The scope of other participants includes the hierarchs of other
Eastern Orthodox Churches, high-rank officials from the Vatican, and
clerics from the Americas and Europe.
A four-partite conference of the religious leaders of Russia and
countries of Southern Caucasus has been timed for the summit.
Previous meetings of top-rank representatives of the world's four
major religions were held in a number of national capitals, including
Moscow.

.Ukraine's former premier vows to denounce agreements with Russia.

KIEV, April 24 (Itar-Tass) - All the agreements that run counter to
Ukraine's national interests will be denounced after state power in this
country changes hands, former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko said Friday
night in a comment on the agreement extending the deployment of Russian
naval forces in the Crimea for 25 years.
"As soon as state power changes hands - and I'm sure it'll do so
within the time brackets established by the Constitution - all the deals
that contravene national interests will be denounces," she said.
"We'll do everything that's needed for the strategy of development of
our state," Timoshenko said. "We haven't ceded either our aircraft
manufacturing or the energy sector or the gas transportation system."
"The opposition must give clear assessments of the authorities'
actions," she said.

.Ukrainian premier says no buyers lining up to buy gas pipelines.

KIEV, April 24 (Itar-Tass) - There are no buyers willing to buy the
Ukrainian gas pipeline system, yet it stands in need of an immediate
modernization, Prime Minister Nikolai Azarov said Friday night as he spoke
on the Inter TV channel.
"Just recall all the shrilling and noise around our alleged plans to
sell the pipelines," he said. "We'd be glad to sell it but no one seems to
need it."
"All of this is mere polemics, of course, and we are not going to sell
the pipeline system to anyone," Azarov said.
He admitted however that the pipelines badly want urgent modernization.
"I called the EU Commissioner's attention to the fact that
procrastinating with the modernization of our pipelines will only bring
about a situation where the EU may lose this highly reliable resource
supply route," Azarov said.

.New Ukrainian-Russia argmnts defend national interests - minister.

KIEV, April 24 (Itar-Tass) - Agreements that Ukraine and Russia signed
in Kharkov April 21 safeguard Ukraine's national interests, Foreign
Minister Konstantin Grishchenko said Friday night as he spoke on the
Ukraina TV channel.
"These agreements defend our national interests through the relations
of strategic partnership with Russia," Grishchenko said. "We're doing this
to break up the stereotype that "there's no doing business with these
Ukrainians," as some people in Moscow say, and not at all for the sake of
being liked by anyone."
He underlined a big share of compromise that both Ukraine and Russia
invested in the agreements.
"These agreements were signed without entering any unions and without
getting into an inferior position on our part so that we could have a
normal budget based on a realistic price of gas and on partnership
relations with Russia," Grishchenko said.
Tuesday, April 21, Presidents Viktor Yanukovich of Ukraine and Dmitry
Medvedev of Russia signed an agreement on prolongation of the deployment
of Russian naval forces in the Crimea for twenty-five years beyond the
year 2017, on which the initial agreement signed in 1997 was to expire.
The document envisions the possibility of a further prolongation for
another five years.
The sides also agreed on a 30% discount of the prices for natural gas
exported to Ukraine.
In the meantime, the leader of the country's political opposition,
former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko said on the same TV channel Friday
night all the agreements that run counter to Ukraine's national interests
will be denounced after state power in this country changes hands.
"As soon as state power changes hands - and I'm sure it'll do so
within the time brackets established by the Constitution - all the deals
that contravene national interests will be denounces," she said.
"We'll do everything that's needed for the strategy of development of
our state," Timoshenko said. "We haven't ceded either our aircraft
manufacturing or the energy sector or the gas transportation system."
"The opposition must give clear assessments of the authorities'
actions," she said.
-0-kle