WARSAW, March 24 - NATO Parliamentary Assembly President Pierre Lellouche said he was "very concerned" that Russia had resorted to cutting off gas to Ukraine in January, adding the cutoff was a blackmail.

"I am very concerned that even during the Cold War, at the height of the Soviet regime, [Russia] never used energy as a weapon, and now they are using it," Lellouche said Thursday at a closed conference in Warsaw, Interfax reported. "They are using it to pressure states, to blackmail states."