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Brussels (AP) - US Foreign Minister Antony Blinken has asked Germany to stop the Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea gas pipeline.
At the same time, Blinken did not rule out further sanctions to prevent the project from being completed.
President Joe Biden has made it very clear that he thinks the pipeline is a bad idea - bad for Europe and bad for the US, Blinken said in Brussels on his first visit to Europe after taking office.
Nord Stream 2 contradicts the EU's own goals in the field of energy security.
In addition, the pipeline has the potential to undermine the interests of Ukraine, Poland and a number of other close partners or allies.
He expects that the dispute over the pipeline will also play a role in his first physical meeting with Federal Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD), which will take place on the sidelines of a NATO meeting starting on Tuesday afternoon, said Blinken.
He is sure that he will have the opportunity to reaffirm the US position on Nord Stream 2.
This also includes US sanctions being imposed on companies involved in efforts to complete the pipeline.
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The demands of the USA are particularly explosive because the pipeline, with its two pipeline strings around 1230 kilometers long, is already more than 90 percent complete.
In the future, it should actually transport 55 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year from Russia to Germany.
The USA justifies its rejection of the project with what it considers to be too dependent of its European partners on Russian gas and in January already imposed sanctions on a company involved in the construction.
Pipeline proponents accuse the US, on the other hand, of only wanting to sell their liquefied gas better in Europe.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210323-99-934692 / 2