KIEV, May 18 – Ukraine seeks to resume imports of natural gas from the Central Asia and has asked Russia to stop opposing the efforts and to open its gas pipelines.

“We would like to get back to this issue,” President Viktor Yanukovych said at a business forum in Kiev joined by his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev. “This partially concerns oil, but mostly natural gas.”

Ukraine used to be importing most of its gas needs from Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, but those markets had closed in 2005 after Russia signed long-term deals to buy most of their gas output.