In Brussels, US Secretary of State John Kerry and the EU’s top diplomat Catherine Ashton have met for high level talks on energy. <br /><br />The summit is expected to be dominated by the simmering Ukraine crisis and comes a day after Moscow imposed a hefty price hike on natural gas to Kyiv. <br /><br />Kerry said the US and Europe were taking important steps to stop individual countries from holding others hostage over energy. <br /><br />Kerry said: “No nation should use energy to stymie a people’s aspirations. It should not be used as a weapon. It is in the interest of all of us to be able to have adequate energy supplies critical to our economies, critical to our security, critical to the prosperity of our people.’‘<br /><br />His warning follows yesterday’s move by Russia’s Gazprom to increase the price of its natural gas for Ukraine by more than 40 percent. <br /><br />That came after a discount, agreed by Ukraine’s ousted President Victor Yanukovych, came to an end.
