Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip said in an interview to the public radio Vikerraadio on Friday that he supports the idea of the Tartu University international law professor and Foreign Policy Institute director Lauri Mälksoo to conclude the Estonian-Russian border agreement without a reference to the Tartu Peace Treaty, Postimees Online reports.
Ansip noted that the state's legal consistency is extremely important and the border agreement that tackles only border issues doesn't make the Tartu Peace Treaty non-existent. "Regulated border policy is better than unregulated border policy," he said.
Ansip added that foreign ministries and experts, at the initiative of the parliament, are working on the border agreement negotiations at present. No documents ready for signing have yet been compiled.
Tartu University international law professor and fresh Foreign Policy Institute director Lauri Mälksoo said recently in the press that the Estonian-Russian border agreement could be concluded already this year if it was stipulated that the border agreement doesn’t regulate anything else besides the location of the border.
Estonian and Russian foreign ministers signed the border agreement between Estonia and Russia in May 2005. The Riigikogu ratified the agreement that summer but added a preamble that states that the new border agreement changes partly the state border line determined with the Tartu Peace Treaty of 1920 but won't affect the rest of the matters regulated by the treaty. Less than a month later Russia announced that it will withdraw its signature from the border agreement claiming that the preamble that Estonia added enables to present territorial claims against Russia. Estonia has repeatedly said that it doesn't have any territorial claims against Russia.
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