Kaliningrad Transit Problem Will Be Resolved by 2004

Eleven possibilities for the solution of the so-called 'transit question' of the Kaliningrad Region were discussed on Thursday at a meeting between Plenipotentiary to the Russian President in the North-West Federal District Victor Cherkesov and the head of the council of directors of the East-West Institute, Martti Ahtisaari. As Deputy Plenipotentiary Andrei Stepanov announced after the meeting on the subject of the Kaliningrad Region, 'I think that by 2004, and certainly by the time of the Baltic States' entry into the EU, which is not expected to be earlier than 2009, all the problems concerning the Kaliningrad Region will have been resolved.

Stepanov remarked that 'a range of sources of mass information as well as several Kaliningrad politicians have reacted with totally un-called for hysteria concerning the Kaliningrad question.

In summing up today's meeting in St. Petersburg, Ahtisaari remarked that 'cooperation with the East-West Institute should bring maximum gain to the population of the whole of northwestern Russia, in particular to the Kaliningrad Region.'