Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul admitted Sunday that problems over land expropriation and taxes in Turkey are holding up work on the construction of a major oil pipeline from Azerbaijan to Turkey\'s Mediterranean coast. In an interview with the CNN-Turk channel, Gul confirmed that British oil multinational BP, the project operator of the planned Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, had complained to the Turkish government over the difficulties. \"We have recently received such a letter. They have raised certain complaints... Some expropriation affairs, some financial affairs and tax issues are creating problems,\" Gul said, without elaborating. He pledged that Ankara would clear the snags in the shortest possible time. \"We have taken an extraordinarily speedy action to overcome the problems. This project is very important for us and the prime minister (Recep Tayyip Erdogan) is personally following the matter,\" Gul said. His comments came atop an announcement from Baku Saturday that a hoped-for loan from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to finance the Azeri section of the conduit has run into problems, apparently due to widespread concerns about the environmental impact of the project. The announcement was seen as a blow for the 2.9-billion-dollar pipeline project to export Caspian oil to the Mediterranean, which has already been dogged by criticism from environmental groups. (AFP)