Russia and Turkey clashed Monday over new Turkish safety rules that are designed to protect ships passing through the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles.Following a rise in traffic and a near disaster in March, Turkey last week started forcing oil tankers and other cargo ships to follow strict traffic rules. But a Russian Foreign Ministry official warned Monday that Russian ships would ignore some of the new restrictions on traffic through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles, two narrow straits between the Black and Mediterranean seas that connect Russia's main Black Sea port, Novorossiisk, with the West. Turkey, in turn, warned it could stop ships that break the rules.Ahmet Erozan, first counsellor of the Turkish Embassy, said that "for us, the subject is already closed."All ships approaching the two straits will have to give advance warning with information on their size, cargo and speed, Erozan said. Oil tankers and other freight ships that may pose a risk to the coastline of the narrow straits, at some spots only 700 meters wide, will be assigned a pilot, he said.Erozan pointed at the rise in traffic, to 50,000 ships per year, to explain why Turkey had toughened its rules. Oil tankers, now transporting 6 million tons of oil but increasing their cargoes rapidly as the former Soviet republics boost oil exports, pose the greatest danger to Istanbul, a city of 10 million bordering the Bosphorus, Erozan said. A Cypriot oil tanker crashed with another Cypriot ship in March, killing 18 and polluting the atmosphere with thick smoke from burning oil."It's kind of a traffic-light question," Erozan said, "just to avoid that kind of accident in the future."But Russia sent a protest note to Turkey last week, accusing Istanbul of "imposing unjustified restrictions, including the possibility of a complete close-down of shipping in the straits, which directly contradicts the 1936 Montreux Convention on Shipping in Channels." Russia said it would ignore any rules it considered unjustified.Vladimir Solotsinsky, head of the Turkey department of the Foreign Ministry, said Russia objected mainly to Turkey's decision to assign pilots, a service that can be quite expensive to Russian freighters. Russia also objects to expected delays at the entrance of the Bosphorus, warning it could cause dangerous traffic jams."This does not mean we won't use pilots," he added, "but we want to decide when we consider it necessary."Instead of restricting traffic and causing dangerous traffic jams at the entrance, Turkey should improve its navigation equipment at the strait to help avoid accidents, Solotsinsky said.Responding to the accusation that the new rule breaches the 1936 guarantee of free transit, Erozan said that "shipping will be free, but regulated." "By putting a pilot on the ship, we are just increasing the security of transit," he said. "It's like an airport, in a sense. An airport is not a free landing area." Erozan said that Russian ships had not broken the rules since they were imposed on July 1, but warned that ships could be fined or banned from the strait if they chose to ignore the regulations.Oil tankers under Russian flag have not had any accidents in the strait, Solotsinsky said.Turkey has supported plans to build pipelines from the former Soviet Union to the Mediterranean.