MOSCOW, June 22 (RIA Novosti) - At the fifth session of the Council of the Baltic Sea States, CBSS, held at a resort near the Estonian capital, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov defended freedom of tanker shipments in the Baltic Sea. Prime Ministers from the 11 member states (besides the 10 Baltic littoral states, the CBSS also includes Iceland) discussed safety of shipments. The environmental issue is a key subject for the EU and the International Maritime Organization, Kommersant points out. From April 15, 2005 the organization intends to declare the Baltic Sea an especially vulnerable zone, which means that mono-hull tankers will be prohibited. This will further complicate Russia's oil and petrochemicals transportation in the sea. If the ban is introduced, the export capacity of the Baltic pipeline network may become useless.
Russia has long been engaged in environmental protection of the Gulf of Finland, Fradkov announced at the meeting. For example, captains of 28 foreign vessels in Primorsk, the Leningrad region, have been notified that their ships did not comply with the IMO standards. Besides, Russia now uses only double-hull tankers in the Baltic, and the ban is not applied to them, the Prime Minister pointed out. Other CBSS representatives noted Russia's environmental achievements, the newspaper writes.
The meeting's participants agreed not to dissolve the organization after almost all of its members had joined the European Union. They decided to turn it into yet another site for Russian-EU cooperation. To signal CBSS inviolability, the 11 Prime Ministers planted trees in an Estonian park, Kommersant reports.
