Moscow and Bratislava will conclude new long-term contracts on supplies and transit through Slovakia of Russian natural gas, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in the Kremlin on Tuesday.

"The agreements on gas supplies and transit through the Slovak territory expire in 2008, and today, we reiterated the principled accord to conclude new long-term contracts, and spoke about expanding the transport infrastructure by joint efforts," Putin told reporters after talks with his Slovak counterpart Ivan Gasparovic.

"Slovakia is an important link in the transit chain of Russian fuel supplies to Europe, and providing our main consumers on the European continent with energy resources depends in many ways on the effectiveness of our cooperation," Putin was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency as saying.

The Slovak president said he was "very glad that Russia's view has a very positive effect for Slovakia."

Putin said that Russian specialists are ready to complete or modernize nuclear power plants in Slovakia.

"An important theme is cooperation between our countries in nuclear power generation; Russian organizations are ready to take part in completing the construction of and modernizing nuclear reactors; a number of projects are already being implemented," he said.

Gasparovic made assurances that his country "sees prospects for building new nuclear reactors, as well as prospects for cooperation with Russia."

Source: Xinhua