BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

03/10/2006

Belarus close to ending demarcation works on Latvian border

MINSK, October 3 (Itar-Tass) - The border of Belarus with its Baltic neighbors of Latvia and Lithuania is now reflected not only on geographic maps, but physically marked on the ground.

Later on Tuesday the last of the 400 border signs will be fixed near the village of Karasino, the Vitebsk region, to delimitate the Belarussian-Latvian border.

Several months ago, 1,957 signs on the Belarussian-Lithuanian border were mounted.

The Baltic border section stretches over 850 kilometers, including 170 kilometers over Latvia and another 680 kilometers over Lithuania, an officer of the Belarussian border troops committee told Itar-Tass.

It took almost 10 years to complete demarcation works that were launched back in 1996.

A total of 12 million U.S. dollars had been spent for demarcation works at this section.

Within the framework of its TACIS Program the EU granted over 4 million U.S. dollars, the rest was allocated from the Belarussian state budget.

Belarus has to coordinate and sign some documents, including demarcation maps and state land laws, to end this process.

Demarcation works on the Lithuanian section will be completed by the end of the year and on the Latvian section - in 2007.

"Belarus' border with the Baltic states is completely new one both by technical equipment and inner content. There is no barbed wire and nothing common with the so called 'iron curtain'," the head of the border troops committee, Alexander Pavlovsky, said.

Source:

http://www.tass.ru/eng/level2.html?NewsID=10848929&PageNum=0

Google