A US diplomat complained Tuesday about what he described as the growing monopoly of the Russian oil giant Gazprom in the Caspian Sea area, while defending American action to develop oil exports from the region. \"We welcome our energy cooperation with Russia,\" Steven Mann, whose State Department brief covers Caspian Sea energy resources, told an international energy conference here. \"We look forward to the development of the Iraqi oil sector, but what a constricted view of the world to believe that progress in one area must come at the expense of the other!\" he said. Speaking of the \"extending monopoly of Gazprom,\" Mann defended American interests in the region: \"In the Caspian area, there\'s a fundamental long-term economic and strategic logic to the policy the United States support and this logic will not change.\" The conference was organized by the Turkish Council of International Economic Relations and Cambridge Energy Research Associates. The annual forum is focusing this year on the reconstruction of Iraq and its oil industry, and on oil tanker safety in the Bosporus Straits and the Dardanelles. Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer recalled the importance of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline as an alternative to sea transport through the Bosporus, \"which endangers the lives of millions.\" The pipeline between the Caspian and the Mediterranean via Turkish territory and the Turkish port of Ceyhan was the \"vertebral column of energy between East and West,\" Sezer said. (AFP)