MOSCOW. April 3 (Interfax) - A Russian deputy foreign minister expressed anxiety on Thursday over the alleged emergence of "new dividing lines" in international energy trade.

"Recently, instead of closer interaction in the energy industry, we have been witnessing the emergence of new dividing lines. Simultaneously, legislative initiatives are coming to a head in the European Union and in some other countries whose nature is giving rise to a whole series of questions. The key points of those projects include principles of imperative separation of the production or generation component from the transportation component (natural gas transmission networks) and limiting investment by companies from third countries in gas transmission networks," Alexander Yakovenko said in a speech at a roundtable in Moscow.

"Alarmed is the only possible description of the reaction of major energy operators to the new legislative initiatives, and this is quite understandable - innovations of this kind may seriously change the picture of their business in the European space. In our view, possible consequences of the use of initiatives of this kind need to be carefully analyzed and compromises that would be acceptable to everyone need to be looked for,"

Yakovenko said in his speech, whose text was posted on his ministry's website.

"I would also like to point out that Russia cannot evade sharing the anxiety of its partners over the steady growth of energy prices. For this reason, in our dialogue with our Western partners, we plan to seek measures that would be able to exercise a stabilizing effect on world prices," he told the roundtable, entitled "Russian Fuel and Energy Complex: the Strategy of Integration with the World Energy Space.