MOSCOW, May 20 (RIA Novosti) - Russia is not going to make territorial concessions to any country, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the State Duma (parliament's lower house) in the discussion of ratification of the Russia-China additional agreement on the eastern portion of the state border.
The Rodina (Homeland) faction coordinator Sergei Glotov said that, ratifying the agreement, Russia allegedly makes concessions to China and asked Lavrov whom else "we are going to make such concessions to."
Lavrov said that in keeping with the agreement "we have specified the state border line of the Russian Federation."
He told parliamentarians that Russia has yet unsettled territorial questions in relations with a number of foreign countries. In particular, talks are still under way with the United States on the delimitation of water areas in the Bering Strait between Russia's Chukotka and the United States' Alaska.
"It is a long-time problem, which depends on the two countries' fishing quotas. These negotiations are still going on," Lavrov said.
"With Norway we are approximating agreement on delimitating water areas in the Barents Sea. It is mostly connected with energy reserves. This question also has an economic aspect," Lavrov said.
In addition, the border agreement with Latvia still remains unsigned, he said.
"The agreement is ready but we are certainly against whatever attempts at unilateral interpretation of the agreement," Lavrov said.
He recalled that this treaty, concluded in the late 1990s, intended the border's passing along the former administrative border between the RSFSR and the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic when both were within the integral state, the USSR.
"We will sign the treaty with Latvia as has been agreed upon and only when the government of Latvia withdraws the unilateral declaration, which views the treaty only as the first step towards resolving the border question," the Russian foreign minister stressed.
There is no question of changes to be made in the border-fixing treaty, he said. "We will not go for that. Riga, NATO and the European Union know it. We've clearly explained that this position remains unchanged," Sergei Lavrov emphasized (Latvia claims the Pytalovo district of Russia's Pskov region).
He also spoke of remaining territorial disputes on the border with Georgia and some other "minor questions" to be specified in demarcation.
"In all these cases, it is not a concession of lands. It is delimitation and border specifications in the cases when it's necessary following the collapse of the Soviet Union," Sergei Lavrov said.
