Outgoing Italian Premier Romano Prodi has turned down an offer to become the head of South Stream, a major gas pipeline being built by Russian gas giant Gazprom and Italian energy company ENI.
Sources at the premier's office said Prodi declined the South Stream presidency during a Monday meeting with Gazprom chief Alexei Miller and ENI CEO Paolo Scaroni.
The Kremlin-backed pipeline will pump gas from Russia, under the Black Sea and on to southern Europe including Italy.
According to a report in Russian newspaper Kommersant, Russian President Vladimir Putin was eager for Prodi to take the South Stream job.
Two years ago, the then outgoing German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder accepted the chair of the holders' board of Gazprom's Nord Stream pipeline.
Italian cabinet sources said that while Prodi was flattered by the South Stream offer, he intended going ahead with a period of ''reflection'' following his decision to retire from active politics.
Prodi, a 68-year-old former European Commission president, beat Silvio Berlusconi in the 2006 general election but was toppled from power in January after a centrist ally quit his fragile centre-left coalition.
The former economics professor also beat Berlusconi in 1996 only to be brought down two years later by a rebellious ally.
From 1982 to 1989 and again from May 1993 to May 1994 Prodi headed Iri, a huge state industrial conglomerate.
ENI's Scaroni said on Monday that Prodi would make an ''excellent'' South Stream president.
''Proposing someone who's been the president of the European Union is a great idea,'' Scaroni said.
