MOSCOW (AP) — Russia’s natural gas monopoly has warned Belarus not to siphon gas from the main pipeline leading across its territory to Europe if it goes ahead with a threatened supply cut-off on New Year’s Day.The European Union and Germany, meanwhile, urged the neighbours to resolve their price dispute quickly and guarantee supplies.

But with both sides refusing to back down, Minsk repeated its threat to disrupt deliveries of Russian gas destined for Europe if state-controlled OAO Gazprom shuts off gas supplies meant for Belarus.

“We will not be able to deliver gas to Europe without a contract,” Belarusian Prime Minister Sergei Sidorsky said late yesterday on state television.

Belarus has refused Gazprom’s demand that it pay more than twice the current price for gas next year and hand over half of the shares in the nation’s pipeline.

The dispute echoes last year’s conflict over gas prices with Ukraine, which led to brief supply shortages in some European nations after Gazprom suspended deliveries to Ukraine and accused it of siphoning gas meant for transit.

The gas war with Ukraine provoked European concerns about Russia’s reliability as a key energy supplier, and Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov said the company will do everything it can to fulfil its obligations to European customers.

Russia provides for a quarter of Europe’s gas consumption, with about 30 percent going through Belarus.

Kupriyanov warned Belarus not to disrupt flows through the Yamal-Europe pipeline, which carries about two-thirds of the Russian gas that transits Belarus on the way to European countries — mainly Germany, Poland and Lithuania.

“Yamal-Europe is exclusively an export pipeline” and is owned by Gazprom, he said, adding that its connections with the rest of the Belarusian system are sealed and that any attempt to disrupt the flow through Belarus would be detected by the company at its headquarters in Moscow.

While Gazprom owns Yamal-Europe, it is under the day-to-day operation of Beltransgaz.