Russia fulfils its obligations on Kaliningrad problem

In a RIA Novosti interview, special presidential envoy on the Kaliningrad problem and the chairman of the State Duma's international affairs committee, Dmitri Rogozin, said that Russia had experienced no delays in solving the problem of the Kaliningrad (the Russian exclave in the Baltics) region.

He was speaking on the eve of a State Duma debate on the ratification of a Russo-Lithuanian inter-governmental agreement, which was signed in the middle of May, 2003 on re-admission (extradition of illegal migrants).

The committee chairman expressed his confidence that this document would be ratified by deputies during a session on Wednesday, June 18.

"We shall see how it will work, the more so since the matter in hand concerns an insignificant number of citizens who in the past had tried, for example, illegally to leave a transit train from the Kaliningrad region travelling via Lithuanian territory," he said.

Rogozin recalled that the Duma had recently ratified Russo-Lithuanian treaties on the state border and on the delimitation of an exclusive economic zone and the continental shelf in the Baltic Sea.

Rogozin stressed that this meant that Russia was fulfilling all its obligations, both formal and informal, on the problem of Kaliningrad transit.