CAIRO/FRANKFURT - Qatar will continue supplying Europe with gas, Minister of State for Energy Affairs Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi told CNN in an interview aired on Friday as Russia's invasion of Ukraine has raised fears of supply disruptions.

"From a business perspective, we do not choose sides," said Al-Kaabi, who is also president and chief executive of state-owned oil and gas group Qatar Energy, commenting on the Russia-Ukraine crisis.

In a separate interview with German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Al-Kaabi said that it would take years for Europe to reduce dependence on Russia for gas, adding such a step required careful planning and took years to implement.

He was commenting days after German economy minister Robert Habeck visited Qatar to seek supplies of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in an attempt to become less reliant on Russia, Germany's largest gas supplier.

Al-Kaabi told FAZ that while no long-term energy partnership had been agreed with Germany yet there was a "clear will" to do business. Germany had on Sunday said that a partnership had been clinched.

(Reporting by Alaa Swilam and Christoph Steitz; Editing by Jan Harvey and Grant McCool)