Budapest  - Senior EU ministers, heads of state and financiers began arriving in the Hungarian capital on Monday for a high-level summit to discuss the planned Nabucco gas pipeline.

Hungary's Socialist Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany said he intends to urge the European Union at the summit on Tuesday to provide financial backing to help get the Nabucco project off the ground.

Nabucco is a 3,300-kilometre gas pipeline that is planned to bring natural gas from Central Asia and the Middle East into the EU. The eight-billion-euro project is seen by the EU as a crucial step towards reducing Europe's dependence on Russian gas.

Gyurcsany said he also plans to propose at the Tuesday summit that countries harmed by the recent Russia-Ukraine dispute over gas pricing should sue for compensation in cases where contractual obligations to supply gas were not honoured. dpa