Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- The European Union on Friday signed a deal with Egypt, Georgia, Turkey and Azerbaijan as it bid to boost the construction of new energy pipelines independent of Russian supplies. But in a watering-down of original proposals, the summit in Prague stopped short of calling for a multilateral "corridor agreement" which would have seen the countries involved sharing energy transit fees as well as financing and expertise.

The countries of the EU’s so-called Southern Corridor "agree to give the necessary political support, and where possible technical and financial assistance to the construction" of the project, a joint statement signed by the summit participants in Prague said.

The declaration commits gas producers to identify "non-committed natural gas and oil volumes ... that can be dedicated specifically to the EU."

It binds the EU to "provide producers with reliable commitments on their aggregate demand."

And it calls on Turkey and EU member states involved in planning the so-called "Nabucco" pipeline from the Caspian Sea to Austria to come to an agreement on the rules governing transit fees and shares by the end of June.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul told the summit that his country supported Nabucco "at the highest level," and that he hoped that Iran would be able to join the project "once a suitable international political environment has come into being."

At the same time, he urged the EU to start talks on bringing his country’s energy laws into line with the bloc’s own rules, a necessary step towards eventual EU membership.

But in a watering-down of earlier drafts of the statement seen by the German Press Agency dpa, the final declaration removed a pledge to negotiate a joint "corridor agreement" which would have shared out transit fees among the states in the corridor.

The summit brought together officials from the EU, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, with observers from Russia, Ukraine and the United States.

The EU is keen to reduce its energy dependency on Russia, which currently accounts for a quarter of all the gas burned in the bloc.

In order to reduce that reliance, the EU is pushing for the construction of three new pipelines in the region which would ultimately bring natural gas from the Caspian basin, Egypt, Iran and Iraq to Europe.

But efforts to build new pipelines have so far failed to produce results, with EU energy firms wanting promises of gas supplies from producers, producing states demanding that the firms first lay their pipes, and transit states demanding high fees for their services.