Greek Prime Minister Costas Caramanlis and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev agreed Tuesday to work more closely on getting Azeri gas into Europe to help ease its energy security problems.
Azerbaijan was a key partner for Europe both as a producer of hydrocarbons and as transit country, Caramanlis said after meeting Aliyev.
The two countries have agreed to work together to extend a Greco-Turkish pipeline inaugurated in 2007 to supply gas from the Caspian Sea to Italy and western Europe, with the work due to be completed in 2011.
Aliyev urged quick progress in talks on the project and said Azerbaijan would "plays and will continue to play an important role in assuring the European Union's energy security.
He called on the support of Greece, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe, for help resolving the conflict with the disputed region of Nagorno Karabakh.
Armenian forces seized control of Nagorno Karabakh from Azerbaijan in the early 1990s in a war that claimed an estimated 30,000 lives and forced about a million people to flee their homes.