Brussels  - The cannot rely too heavily on Russia and Ukraine for its energy needs after a row between the two cut off natural gas supplies to the bloc for two weeks, EU foreign ministers agreed Monday.

Instead, they said, the EU must find energy elsewhere.

"It's too early to draw conclusions from (the gas conflict), but we can see that neither Russia nor Ukraine comes out of it looking good ... In the end it was Russia that turned the gas supplies off, not Ukraine," Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said after talks with EU counterparts in Brussels.

"That will have the effect of greatly strengthening the pressure on the EU to develop a more coherent energy security policy," he said.

Monday's talks were the first time the foreign ministers of the EU's 27 member states discussed the gas row since it broke out on January 1. At its height, the crisis cut all Russian gas supplies through Ukraine to Europe, leaving EU states such as Bulgaria and Slovakia critically short of heating amidst plunging temperatures.

The ministers agreed that the bloc must increase its efforts to find energy supplies from new sources, and to build more links between individual member states so that they can help one another in times of shortages, Czech deputy premier Alexander Vondra, who chaired the debate, said.

"Both Russia and Ukraine have somehow undermined their credibility and reputation as reliable gas suppliers and transit countries," EU Foreign Affairs Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said.

Germany's Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, one of the EU's most outspoken advocates of a diplomatic approach to Russia, agreed that both sides had lost face in Europe's eyes.

"Ukraine as a transit country, as well as Russia as a producer, have lost credibility in the eyes of EU member states, especially consumer countries, and there will be much work needed to restore this lost credibility," he said.

And the EU will make sure that questions of energy supply are a "central" part of a planned strategic treaty with Russia, Bildt said.

The EU is currently preparing for a flurry of diplomatic activity along its eastern border, with an EU-Russia summit planned for May.

The Czech government, current holder of the EU's rotating presidency, is also set to launch a planned "Eastern Partnership" - a closer trading and political relationship with former Soviet states such as Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia - on May 7. dpa