Budapest  - Ukraine restarted the delivery of gas to Hungary early Tuesday afternoon, the Hungarian gas distributor FGSZ said in a statement.

"This crisis has demonstrated that, although Ukraine remains the main transit country, there is also a need for alternative supply routes such as North and South Stream and Nabucco," Foreign Minister Kinga Goncz told the press.

Nabucco is a pipeline project, favoured by the EU and the US, that would carry gas from the Middle East and Central Asia, cutting Russia and Ukraine out of the supply chain.

Hungary is hosting a summit meeting on January 27 to push for the rapid implementation of the Nabucco pipeline, which was first mooted in 2002 but has stayed on the drawing board due to lack of financial and political backing.

North and South Stream are two new pipelines that Russian energy giant Gazprom plans to build to export Russian gas to Europe while bypassing Ukraine.

South Stream is seen by many in Brussels as a rival to the Nabucco project and part of an attempt by Russia to consolidate its grip over energy supplies to Europe.

"It is for this reason that the Nabucco summit on January 27 aims to bring together all the affected players in the interests of more quickly realizing the project," she said.

Goncz also noted that a functioning gas pipeline between Hungary and Slovakia was needed, saying that Hungary was unable to supply its northern neighbour with gas while the pipes from Ukraine were closed because of questions about the Slovak section of the existing pipeline.

The flow of natural gas from Russia to Ukraine resumed before dawn on Tuesday, the morning after the two countries settled a dispute over pricing. Hungary had received no gas from its eastern neighbour since January 6. (dpa)