Georgia\'s President Mikhail Saakashvili met with his Azeri counterpart Ilham Aliyev during a visit designed to reinforce friendly ties between the two neighbours and partners in a strategic oil pipeline project. Good relations between the two nations are seen as crucial to the multi-billion-dollar (euro) Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, which will export crude from the landlocked Caspian Sea, across Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, to world markets. It was the first time the leaders of the two former Soviet republics in the Caucasus had met. Both men came to power within the past six months, Saakashvili in a bloodless revolt and Aliyev when he succeeded his father as president. The BTC pipeline, currently under construction, will pump up to one million barrels of oil a day from a terminal at Sangachal, 30 kilometres (18 miles) south of Baku, to a tanker terminal on the Mediterranean Sea. It is being built by a consortium of multinational oil companies, with backing from the US government, and the bill for construction will come in at around three billion dollars (2.4 billion euros). The pipeline, due to start pumping oil in the first quarter of 2005, is seen as key to harvesting the oil riches of the Caspian Sea, home to some of the world\'s largest untapped hydrocarbon reserves. Saakashvili re-stated his commitment to the project, which will provide much-needed transit revenues for his country, saying that \"for Georgia, the pipeline is a question of survival.\" Away from energy projects, Saakashvili floated the idea of an economic and customs union between Azerbaijan and Georgia which, he said, would help lift the two countries out of poverty. (AFP)