Poland hopes it will be able to sign a new natural gas agreement with Russia soon, said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
"Natural gas cannot and should not be a political issue in Polish-Russian relations, and should be a matter of common interest," Tusk told a press conference with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Sopot, northern Poland.
"This means that there is a chance that we'll soon complete negotiations and sign the gas contract," he added.
Poland has been hoping since the beginning of the year to compete the talks between the governments of Russia and Poland on additional gas supplies.
Poland needs to buy more natural gas from 2010 and its gas monopoly PGNiG (PGN.WA) is in negotiations with Russian energy giant OAO Gazprom (GAZP.RS) to increase supplies.
As a result of the Russian-Ukrainian gas conflict in the beginning of the year, Gazprom-linked gas trader RosUkrEnergo, which over the past years supplied Poland with 2.3 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year, lost access to its gas sources and stopped delivering to Poland via Ukraine.