TALLINN. May 17 (Interfax) - The Estonian government has decided to begin the development of lands planned for a swap with Russia, the ERR website said on Friday.
"The Russian and Estonian foreign ministers signed treaties on the state border and the delimitation of waters in 2005 and 2014, but they were never ratified. The government decided yesterday to start building border infrastructure irrespective of those agreements," the website said.
"It was planned back then that we, for instance, could receive the so-called Saatse Boot. You know that Russia controls this plot and Estonian residents have to go through it. We were due to give away a plot of the same size somewhere near the border in exchange," Estonian Interior Minister Lauri Laanemets said.
"Obviously, we are not going to make such a swap with Russia," he said.
The earlier border development plans took into account the eventual swap and an area of 4.2 kilometers was designated for that purpose, Laanemets said. "Now we have decided to begin the design and construction of border infrastructure, including in those areas, since we are hardly going to swap any lands with Russia for decades or even centuries," he said.
A bypass will be built around the Saatse Boot so that people can travel on Estonian territory instead of Russian, where they are not allowed to stop.
Estonia and Russia do not have a delimited border. A border treaty was signed in Moscow in 2005 after more than ten years of negotiations. Estonia mentioned the Tartu Peace Treaty in the document's preamble during ratification. Russia views the Tartu Peace Treaty as a historical document which has no legal value. It said that Estonia was planning to make territorial claims in the future and revoked its signature. The two foreign ministers signed a new treaty in 2014. It has yet to be ratified.