The arrest of a Russian trawler in the Bering Sea last week served as a reminder of a simmering border spat that chafes Russian-U.S. ties even as the two countries have been drawing closer over the past year.
The dispute, whose foundation was laid when Russia sold Alaska to the United States in 1867, involves Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze, the political ambitions of Federation Council senators and a fight for schools of young pollock.
At stake is 7,500 square kilometers of the Bering Sea that the Soviet Union ceded to the United States in 1990 in a treaty signed by then Soviet Foreign Minister Shevardnadze and U.S. Secretary of State James Baker. The agreement was ratified by the U.S. Congress but not by the Russian parliament. Both countries were slowly negotiating the issue until a couple of Federation Council senators reignited the dispute early this month.
A war of words began heating up when the U.S. Coast Guard seized the trawler Viytna in the Bering Strait last Wednesday. The Viytna was towed to the Alaskan port of Dutch Harbor on Monday, and U.S. authorities have opened an investigation, Coast Guard Petty Officer Darrell Wilson said.
U.S. officials said the boat and its 84-member crew were fishing 50 kilometers inside the U.S. economic zone.
The State Fisheries Committee initially said the Viytna accidentally sailed 700 meters beyond the Russian border but then corrected itself Monday, saying it did not cross the border, local media reported.
The arrest sparked an angry outburst in Moscow.
"This incident was probably staged by the Americans on purpose," State Fisheries Committee spokesman Alexei Iskin told Ekho Moskvy radio Friday. "It is a sharp reaction to the process initiated by Federation Council members to resume discussion of the Shevardnadze-Baker agreement."
One of the two Federation Council senators who stirred up the debate, Mikhail Margelov, head of the council's foreign affairs committee, fired off a protest to U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow on Monday, RIA-Novosti reported.
Their letter asked Vershbow to explain the reason for the trawler's arrest and invited him to attend Federation Council hearings on the border on Sept. 20.
Vershbow said Monday that routine consultations were needed to resolve the trawler incident. As for the border dispute, he said the 1990 treaty is "quite balanced and reflects a number of compromises."
"It is hard to imagine that new negotiations could generate some other result," he said on Ekho Moskvy.
When Alaska was sold, the middle of the maritime border was set halfway between the Ratmanov and Krusenshtern islands in the Bering Strait. The only guidelines were that the boundary was to go straight north "until lost in the ice" and south to a point between the islands of Medny and Attu in the Bering Sea.
The 55-kilometer national border in the Bering Strait is not disputed. The problem emerged in the 1970s, when international law introduced the idea of 200-mile exclusive economic zones and the Bering Sea had to be divvied up. In such a zone, neighboring countries have the right to exploit water and seabed resources without full sovereignty.
By that time, Russian fishermen were already fishing in what became the U.S. economic zone, and the United States initially did not mind. But after negotiations in the 1980s, a 7,500-square-kilometer part of that zone was ceded to the United States in exchange for other areas. A Foreign Ministry official said in a 1999 interview that during the talks, the Soviet Foreign Ministry had a top-secret instruction from the Politburo to insist on a straight-line boundary. He said Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev had rushed the talks at the expense of a better deal so as have a treaty ready to sign during his 1990 summit with then-President George Bush.
The main haggling was over how to draw a straight border: on a flat map or a globe.
Shevardnadze and Baker ended up signing the accord, but Russia has neither ratified nor denounced it. For lack of another arrangement, the agreement remains de facto in effect.
Washington agreed to negotiate the issue in the mid-1990s, and several rounds of talks between fishing officials have been held. In exchange for quotas to Russian fishermen in the U.S. economic zone, Washington wanted Russia to limit fishing for young pollock in Russian waters and allow U.S. inspectors to make sure the limits were being observed.
That proved to be the sticking point in the negotiations. The next round of talks are to be held later this month, and Russia has already submitted its proposals, Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said. He said a 1997 review of the matter concluded that the 1990 agreement on the whole suited Russia's interests.
"It was considered expedient to continue with it until talks on the disputed issues of fishing are concluded," he was quoted by Interfax as saying.
Some fishing officials and politicians are determined to scrap the 1990 agreement. Former Chukotka Governor Alexander Nazarov, who with Margelov is spearheading the border drive, said last week that Russia was losing as much as $200 million worth of fish in the disputed area a year, almost double the $120 million that the fisheries committee reported three years ago.
He has even sent an appeal to the Prosecutor General's Office asking that an investigation be opened into whether Shevardnadze exceeded his powers by signing the deal. Shevardnadze, who is now under fire from the Kremlin for refusing to play along with Moscow over the Pankisi Gorge, is a favorite target of the Russian political and military elite, who often accuse him of betraying Russian interests in the last days of the Cold War.
Margelov suggested that warming ties with the United States increases the likelihood that the treaty can be renegotiated. "We have established constructive relations with the Americans and developed a range of working mechanisms," he said.
Alexander Pikayev of the Moscow Carnegie Center, however, was skeptical about the success of the Federation Council-initiated talks and said Russia has more to lose than gain in the dispute. He said the opponents of the treaty were probably merely trying to raise their political profiles and please the Kremlin by attacking Shevardnadze.
"Americans are very sensitive to any pokes, especially if it has to do with Alaska," he said. "And Alaska is Senator Ted Stevens, who is the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee."
He pointed out that the border issue was being raised the same month that a U.S. Congress commission is reviewing a program to fund the dismantling of Russian chemical weapons with U.S. tax dollars. "And there, the talk is about $600 million, not $200 million," Pikayev said.
The commission was to discuss the issue Tuesday.
The dispute, whose foundation was laid when Russia sold Alaska to the United States in 1867, involves Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze, the political ambitions of Federation Council senators and a fight for schools of young pollock.
At stake is 7,500 square kilometers of the Bering Sea that the Soviet Union ceded to the United States in 1990 in a treaty signed by then Soviet Foreign Minister Shevardnadze and U.S. Secretary of State James Baker. The agreement was ratified by the U.S. Congress but not by the Russian parliament. Both countries were slowly negotiating the issue until a couple of Federation Council senators reignited the dispute early this month.
A war of words began heating up when the U.S. Coast Guard seized the trawler Viytna in the Bering Strait last Wednesday. The Viytna was towed to the Alaskan port of Dutch Harbor on Monday, and U.S. authorities have opened an investigation, Coast Guard Petty Officer Darrell Wilson said.
U.S. officials said the boat and its 84-member crew were fishing 50 kilometers inside the U.S. economic zone.
The State Fisheries Committee initially said the Viytna accidentally sailed 700 meters beyond the Russian border but then corrected itself Monday, saying it did not cross the border, local media reported.
The arrest sparked an angry outburst in Moscow.
"This incident was probably staged by the Americans on purpose," State Fisheries Committee spokesman Alexei Iskin told Ekho Moskvy radio Friday. "It is a sharp reaction to the process initiated by Federation Council members to resume discussion of the Shevardnadze-Baker agreement."
One of the two Federation Council senators who stirred up the debate, Mikhail Margelov, head of the council's foreign affairs committee, fired off a protest to U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow on Monday, RIA-Novosti reported.
Their letter asked Vershbow to explain the reason for the trawler's arrest and invited him to attend Federation Council hearings on the border on Sept. 20.
Vershbow said Monday that routine consultations were needed to resolve the trawler incident. As for the border dispute, he said the 1990 treaty is "quite balanced and reflects a number of compromises."
"It is hard to imagine that new negotiations could generate some other result," he said on Ekho Moskvy.
When Alaska was sold, the middle of the maritime border was set halfway between the Ratmanov and Krusenshtern islands in the Bering Strait. The only guidelines were that the boundary was to go straight north "until lost in the ice" and south to a point between the islands of Medny and Attu in the Bering Sea.
The 55-kilometer national border in the Bering Strait is not disputed. The problem emerged in the 1970s, when international law introduced the idea of 200-mile exclusive economic zones and the Bering Sea had to be divvied up. In such a zone, neighboring countries have the right to exploit water and seabed resources without full sovereignty.
By that time, Russian fishermen were already fishing in what became the U.S. economic zone, and the United States initially did not mind. But after negotiations in the 1980s, a 7,500-square-kilometer part of that zone was ceded to the United States in exchange for other areas. A Foreign Ministry official said in a 1999 interview that during the talks, the Soviet Foreign Ministry had a top-secret instruction from the Politburo to insist on a straight-line boundary. He said Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev had rushed the talks at the expense of a better deal so as have a treaty ready to sign during his 1990 summit with then-President George Bush.
The main haggling was over how to draw a straight border: on a flat map or a globe.
Shevardnadze and Baker ended up signing the accord, but Russia has neither ratified nor denounced it. For lack of another arrangement, the agreement remains de facto in effect.
Washington agreed to negotiate the issue in the mid-1990s, and several rounds of talks between fishing officials have been held. In exchange for quotas to Russian fishermen in the U.S. economic zone, Washington wanted Russia to limit fishing for young pollock in Russian waters and allow U.S. inspectors to make sure the limits were being observed.
That proved to be the sticking point in the negotiations. The next round of talks are to be held later this month, and Russia has already submitted its proposals, Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said. He said a 1997 review of the matter concluded that the 1990 agreement on the whole suited Russia's interests.
"It was considered expedient to continue with it until talks on the disputed issues of fishing are concluded," he was quoted by Interfax as saying.
Some fishing officials and politicians are determined to scrap the 1990 agreement. Former Chukotka Governor Alexander Nazarov, who with Margelov is spearheading the border drive, said last week that Russia was losing as much as $200 million worth of fish in the disputed area a year, almost double the $120 million that the fisheries committee reported three years ago.
He has even sent an appeal to the Prosecutor General's Office asking that an investigation be opened into whether Shevardnadze exceeded his powers by signing the deal. Shevardnadze, who is now under fire from the Kremlin for refusing to play along with Moscow over the Pankisi Gorge, is a favorite target of the Russian political and military elite, who often accuse him of betraying Russian interests in the last days of the Cold War.
Margelov suggested that warming ties with the United States increases the likelihood that the treaty can be renegotiated. "We have established constructive relations with the Americans and developed a range of working mechanisms," he said.
Alexander Pikayev of the Moscow Carnegie Center, however, was skeptical about the success of the Federation Council-initiated talks and said Russia has more to lose than gain in the dispute. He said the opponents of the treaty were probably merely trying to raise their political profiles and please the Kremlin by attacking Shevardnadze.
"Americans are very sensitive to any pokes, especially if it has to do with Alaska," he said. "And Alaska is Senator Ted Stevens, who is the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee."
He pointed out that the border issue was being raised the same month that a U.S. Congress commission is reviewing a program to fund the dismantling of Russian chemical weapons with U.S. tax dollars. "And there, the talk is about $600 million, not $200 million," Pikayev said.
The commission was to discuss the issue Tuesday.