Russia, Estonia sign border treaty

  • 2005-05-18
  • By Ksenia Repson
TALLINN - After months of procrastination and hair-splitting, Estonia and Russia finally signed a border agreement May 18 in Moscow. Foreign ministers Sergei Lavrov and Urmas Paet signed the treaty demarcating the land and martime borders between the two countries.

"We are very satisfied that the border accords have been signed after a process that took 10 years," Paet told reporters.

Earlier, President Vladimir Putin, when asked by Astrid Kannel, an Estonian TV reporter, about territorial claims and apologies for the occupation of the Baltics, Putin replied that there were no territorial claims between Russia and Estonia and that there had been no occupation.

This was followed by his already infamous quote: "Maybe I didn't study very well at the university because I drank too much beer in Soviet times, but something still remains in my head, because our history teachers were good."

After a meeting with EU leaders, Putin told reporters that there would be no more apologies for what they called the Soviet occupation that followed the end of World War II.

At the same time, he said that Russia was ready to sign a treaty both with Estonia and Latvia, even though President Arnold Ruutel had refused to participate in the May 9 ceremonies in Moscow.

The Russian president's statements sent a wave of excitement through the Estonian community, albeit many remained suspicious.

Daily newspapers in Estonia made Kannel out to be a national hero for her unflinching bravery for asking the Russian president, a person easily irked by reporters, such a direct question.

Still, others were irked by his statement on history. "It seems that Putin had honestly drunk too much beer during the Soviet times," said former Prime Minister Mart Laar.

Meanwhile, just two days before Foreign Affairs Minister Urmas Paet was scheduled to leave for Russia to sign the treaty with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov inked a resolution on the border agreement.

According to the Kremlin's press service, the president's proposal includes a treaty on the delimitation of the sea border.

Paet assured that Estonia would not attempt to add a unilateral statement to the treaty, as Latvia did.

Yet the ratification process still has a long way to go. Once it is approved by the countries' two parliaments, it will be a month before the border treaty enters into force. The delimitation agreement needs to be ratified as well.

A joint-commission will control the demarcation of the Narva Bay and the Gulf of Finland. If a deposit is discovered, Russia and Estonia will draft an agreement on the best ways to pursue environmentally friendly development of the deposit.

Several aspects, however, still need to be finalized. In a recent interview, Lavrov noted that there had been no improvements in implementing recommendations by international organizations on how to solve Latvia and Estonia's Russian-speaking minority problems.

Estonian politicians seem eager to counter these charges with accusations levelled at Russia over treatment of Finno-Ugric minorities in the Russian Federation (see story on Page 1).