* Belarus sees gas price rising to $210 in 2011
* Gazprom says price could be $220 -Ifax
* Minsk currently pays $184
(Adds details, background, Gazprom comments)
MINSK, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Belarus expects the price it pays for Russian gas to rise to $210 per 1,000 cubic metres in 2011 from $184 now, a senior government official said on Friday, but supplier Gazprom signalled it could be higher still.
Belarus has benefited from price discounts for Russian gas, which are due to expire from the start of 2011.
"If things carry on in this way, next year the price will be $210," Vladimir Semashko, the first deputy prime minister, told a briefing broadcast on national radio.
Later in the day, Andrey Kruglov, the chief financial officer of Russian gas exporter Gazprom, told reporters in Minsk that the price could be higher still.
"If one assumes that the oil price next year will be the same as in the fourth quarter of this year, then the average price for Belarus in 2011 will be around $220 per thousand cubic metres," Interfax news agency quoted Kruglov as saying.
"This price is formed taking into account the absence of a discount coefficient in 2011," he added.
Belarus has paid 90 percent of European gas prices in 2010 and 80 percent in 2009.
The two countries clashed over gas prices earlier this summer. Russia cut supply to Belarus, and Minsk threatened that it could halt the shipping of gas onward to Europe.
In 2009, Belarus bought 17.6 billion cubic metres of Russian gas and served as a transit route for the supplies of 44.6 bcm to Europe, or around 20 percent of Moscow's sales to the region. (Reporting by Andrey Makhovsky; Writing by Toni Vorobyova, editing by Jane Baird)