Kaliningrad Row Flares up

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, October 09, 2002

Kaliningrad Row Flares up

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The governor of Russia's Kaliningrad region said Tuesday that the Kremlin shouldn't compromise on its push for visa-free travel to and from the Baltic Sea territory after neighboring Poland and Lithuania join the EU in 2004.

Gov. Vladimir Yegorov said at a news conference. "Russia must defend its sovereignty once and for all and shouldn't make any concessions on that."

Moscow has pressed the European Union to allow Russians to travel visa-free on special nonstop trains to and from Kaliningrad, home to 1.5 million residents, after Poland and Lithuania join the EU as expected in 2004. The EU has instead proposed creating a multiple-entry "Kaliningrad Pass," an idea that Moscow dismissed as a surrogate visa.

The dispute, which will figure prominently on the agenda of a Nov. 11 EU-Russia summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, has marred otherwise warm relations between Russia and the West. Russian President Vladimir Putin has voiced frustration over the slow progress on the Kaliningrad issue, adding that it could undermine the improving ties between Russia and the EU.

In a statement issued last week, the EU foreign ministers stressed the need for visas to guarantee "the security and safety of all current and future EU citizens by controlling their borders and movement of people and goods on their territory."

EU governments - already worried about the influx of illegal immigrants from East European - fear that Russians will go to elsewhere in the EU once they are in Poland or Lithuania without a visa.

Yegorov, the former commander of the Baltic Sea fleet based in Kaliningrad, also said that Russia would have to negotiate separate rules for military transit instead of an outdated agreement.

The Soviet Union acquired Kaliningrad from defeated Germany after World War II. It came to lie outside of Russia following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia says there are 960,000 crossings by train and another 620,000 by car between Kaliningrad and the rest of Russia each year.

Source: Agencies

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