PRAGUE (AFP)--The European Union opened talks with leaders from the Caspian sea region and beyond in Prague Friday to breathe some life into the ambitious Nabucco pipeline project designed to take non-Russian gas to Europe.

The Southern Corridor project discussed under the Czech E.U. presidency is meant above all to reduce Europe's dependence on Russian resources through cooperation with Caspian, Central Asian and Middle East countries.

"The E.U. and the countries of the 'new Silk Road' are launching a new cooperation which could lead to more diversification of energy resouces and cooperation in the energy sector," said Czech deputy prime minister Alexandr Vondra.

"We need to bring consuming countries like the E.U. and supplying countries like Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and other transit countries like Turkey together," he told reporters before the meeting.

The project centers above all on the 3,300-kilometer, EUR7.9 billion pipeline between Turkey and Austria, which it is hoped will start pumping gas to Europe by 2014.

Its goal is to bypass Russia and Ukraine, whose dispute over gas prices halted supplies to Europe in January, leaving thousands of households without heating in the middle of a severe winter.

In a draft statement seen by AFP, the E.U. along with Azerbaijan, Egypt, Georgia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan agreed that the E.U. and Turkey should hammer out a deal on Nabucco "as quickly as possible (and) to sign it by June 2009."

Turkey, which hoped to join the E.U., threatened in January to block Nabucco, citing a lack of progress in its talks on E.U. accession, but Thursday it voiced full support to the project.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul was in Prague for the meeting.

All the other attending countries were represented by heads of state or ministers, with the exception of Iraq which has failed to show up, according to the official guest list.

The Nabucco project also involves funding from a consortium of private companies comprising Germany's RWE AG (RWE.XE), Austria's OMV AG (OMV.VI), Hungary's MOL Nyrt (MOL.BU), Transgaz SA of Romania, Bulgargaz of Bulgaria and Botas of Turkey.

The draft joint statement also called for progress on ITGI, a Turkish-Greek gas pipeline taking gas to Italy, and for an extension of an oil transport system between Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan that "could be developed in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea region."

The Southern Corridor also seeks to boost transport links with Turkey and the South Caucasus and "beyond to Central Asia along the Southern corridor, including connections to the Middle East."

As well, the statement urges the E.U. to sign deals on energy with Iraq and Egypt and "agree on specific projects in developing Egypt's gas reserves and export potential for the E.U."