"We are absolutely dissatisfied with the very slow pace of the preparations regarding the plan to build a new nuclear power station at Ignalina in Lithuania," Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip told reporters at a joint press conference with visiting Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian and Polish authorities will meet in the near future to discuss progress on the new Ignalina facility, Ansip said.

"The slowness of Ignalina project in Lithuania has been the only reason why Estonia has launched preparations to look for an option to build its own nuclear power station," Ansip said.

He added Estonia was prepared to build a cable link under the Baltic Sea to Finland to plug Baltic states into the Nordic energy network.

"We also need an energy connection between Lithuania and Poland but a new Ignalina power station is a pre-requisite for this," the Estonian leader said.

Ansip was echoed by Poland's Tusk who urged Lithuania to speed up the pace on the new Ignalina atomic power plant and said his country was for the first time considering building its own nuclear power facilities regardless of the Ignalina project.

In March, Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus said work on the stalled project to build a new nuclear power plant to replace Lithuania's Soviet-era Ignalina atomic power facility could begin this autumn.

Under its 2004 deal to enter the European Union, Lithuania pledged to shut down the existing Soviet-era Ignalina facility by 2010.

The new Ignalina plant was originally due to be up and running by 2015, but is now officially targeted for 2018 due in part to disagreement with fellow ex-communist 2004 EU entrants and investors Estonia, Latvia and Poland over shares of power output.

Experts suggest 2020 as a more realistic target for the plant's opening.

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Paris (AFP) April 30, 2009
French nuclear power group Areva said Thursday it had filed a request for arbitration to try to stop Germany's Siemens creating a rival venture with Russian group Rosatom.