premise: The tense countdown to Russia's threatened cutting of gas supplies to Belarus, which could also hit deliveries to western Europe, entered its final hours of confrontation over pricing on Thursday.
  Negotiations continued in Moscow, said Sergei Kupriyanov, spokesman for Russia's state-controlled monopoly Gazprom.
  He refused to give details of the talks, slightly more than three days before a deadline laid down by Russia which is causing concern in the European Union.
  Gazprom chairman Alexei Miller has warned that gas supplies to Belarus will be turned off at 10:00 am in Moscow (0700 GMT) on Monday if Belarus, an ex-Soviet republic, does not agree to a more than doubling of price.
  With Gazprom and Belarus both warning of a knock-on effect for western European customers who rely on Belarus as a transit point for Russian gas, the crisis increasingly resembles the showdown between Russia and Ukraine at New Year's 2006.
   What will be the cause of the knock-on effect for Western European customers?
hypothesis: more than doubling of price