Russia hopes for Estonia's smooth ratification of border treaty
TALLINN. May 20 (Interfax) - The Russian Embassy in Estonia has expressed satisfaction with the border treaty text coordinated with Estonia and hopes there will be no surprises in the ratification process, Eesti Paevaleht reported on Monday quoting an embassy commentary.
"The embassy recalled the events of 2005 when the [Estonian] parliament attached a preamble regarding the Tartu Peace Treaty to the coordinated text, Russia retracted its signature and the border treaty was not concluded," the newspaper said.
Social Democratic Party Chairman Sven Mikser assured the newspaper, "the probability of the treaty's hitting the reef while being ratified in the parliament is minimal."
He said that a joint statement of all parliamentary groups was the foundation of border treaty consultations with Russia.
"Besides, "surprises" at the final stage of negotiations and ratification would not meet anyone's interests," Mikser said.
Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov signed treaties on the land and sea borders in Moscow in May 2005. Yet the Estonian parliament supplemented the instrument of ratification with a preamble affirming the validity of the Tartu Peace Treaty of 1920, which determined the pre-war border. Russia views the Tartu Peace Treaty as a historical document only. It understood the Estonian parliament's move as an attempt to reserve the right for future territorial claims to Russia and revoked its signatures.
The sides resumed consultations on a new border treaty at the end of 2012. Three rounds of consultations have been held by now. After the third round held on May 8, the Estonian parliament foreign affairs commission concluded that the new treaty was ready and Estonia could accept two provisions added to the previous treaty to assert that the document was purely technical and the sides had no territorial claims to each other.