Border Treaty Put Aside in Estonia-Russia Relations
Estonian and Russian foreign ministers discussed relations between their two countries in bilateral talks at a Council of the Baltic Sea States' meeting in Oslo.
Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov discussed the status of Estonia-Russia relations.
Paet said the developments are stable and practical. The two countries are preparing a social security agreement, a diplomatic property agreement, and a protocol for readmission of illegal immigrants and criminals.
Economic relations have grown closer in recent years, and the number of Russian tourists visiting Estonia has increased. Estonia supports Russia's joining of the World Trade Organisation. The visas issued to Russian citizens in Estonian consulates are long-term and for multiple entries but the long border-crossing queues still need to be resolved.
But the looming troublemaker is still the stalemated border treaty, which the two countries came close to signing in 2005. The process came to a halt at the 11th hour when the Russian Duma withheld ratification after Parliament's inclusion of a reference to the 1920 Tartu Peace Treaty in the preamble to the treaty's ratification law, which the Russian side claimed to be a territorial pretension by Estonia.
"We should not link the fact that the border agreements have not yet come into effect with other topics in Estonia-Russia relations," Paet said.
Ott Tammik