Energy tops agenda as Chirac hosts Merkel, Putin

COMPIEGNE, France, Sep 23 (Reuters) The leaders of France, Germany and Russia today met in an 18th century chateau near Paris with aviation and Western worries about energy security high on the agenda.

French President Jacques Chirac met Russia's Vladimir Putin for dinner at the Elysee Palace yesterday and the two leaders travelled to Compiegne north of Paris early today for a three-way meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The talks, taking place near the spot where the armistice ending World War One was signed, will cover a range of international issues, including Iran and Lebanon.

A newspaper report that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden died of typhoid in Pakistan last month threatened to force its way on to the agenda before a joint news conference due at 1230 hrs.

French regional newspaper L'Est Republicain quoted a secret French intelligence report as saying Saudi Arabia's secret service was convinced bin Laden died on August 23. It said Chirac had been informed but his aides declined to comment.

The Defence Ministry said today the newspaper report could not be confirmed and it would hold an inquiry into the leak.

Attention at the three-way summit has been focused on energy security and Russia's desire to join the core group behind EADS after it acquired a 5 per cent stake in the flagship European aerospace group earlier this month.

Shorn of Soviet-era debt and flush with oil revenues, a newly confident Moscow has sought to create industrial champions in energy and other strategic sectors, notably aerospace and defence.

AVIATION COOPERATION Kremlin spokesman Alexei Gromov said Putin and Chirac at their meeting on Friday talked ''in detail'' about cooperation in air transport and aircraft manufacturing. He said they also discussed Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq.

EADS bosses have welcomed technical cooperation but firmly rebuffed talk that Russia might become a core shareholder. Russia has a big arms and aviation industry of its own and says it can offer important technical expertise to the consortium, which is struggling with problems with its new A380 super jumbo.

Russian airline Transaero said it would buy eight Airbus A330s by 2012. The catalogue price for the aircraft is 1.23 billion dollars, the company said.

France has billed the meeting, the latest in an informal series that began in 1998 between Chirac, former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Putin's predecessor Boris Yeltsin, as a chance to exchange views.

Chirac and Putin expressed condolences to Merkel over the train accident in northern Germany that killed 23 people yesterday before the three began the main discussions.

Part of the aim of the meeting will be to ease worries over energy security which have resurfaced in a standoff with Western oil companies over huge oil and gas projects in Russia's remote Sakhalin region.

Russia, which caused deep alarm in Europe last winter by cutting off gas supplies to Ukraine, has pressured oil groups such as Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil to gain a greater share of the Sakhalin revenues.

The future of a production sharing agreement won by French oil group Total at the Kharyaga field in West Siberia has also been thrown into question, although Putin dismissed as ''greatly exaggerated'' suggestions that Total could lose its licence.

Officials have played down expectations of concrete results and no-one was forecasting the kind of outcome associated with previous meetings, when Chirac, Putin and Merkel's predecessor Gerhard Schroeder lined up to attack US policy in Iraq.

REUTERS SHB KP1618