Russian President meets Turkish PM in Moscow

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, on an official visit to Russia, met President Dmitry Medvedev in his residence outside Moscow on Wednesday.  Gas pipelines and a project to build the first nuclear power plant in Turkey, will dominate talks between the Russian president and the visiting Turkish premier on Wednesday, the Kremlin said. "Major projects like the South Stream and Blue Stream [natural gas] pipelines and the construction of Turkey's first nuclear power plant are on the agenda of the talks between Dmitry Medvedev and Tayyip Erdogan," the Kremlin said on Tuesday.  Turkey, which seeks to strengthen its position as a transit hub for oil and gas, issued its approval last August for Russia's Gazprom to use its sector of the Black Sea for the $11 billion South Stream pipeline to pump Russian and Central Asian gas to Europe bypassing Ukraine. In July, it signed a deal on the EU-backed rival pipeline Nabucco. Russia and Turkey also plan to build the second leg of the Blue Stream pipeline, linking the two countries via the Black Sea, to export Russian gas to Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Cyprus via Turkey.