It is listed as Federal law No. 500242-5 in the documents on ratification of international treaties signed by Russia when it today is up for approval in the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament.
The historic document is better known as the Treaty between Russian Federation and Kingdom of Norway on the delimitation of maritime areas and cooperation in the Barents Sea and Arctic Ocean.
At the start of the debate, 58 deputies out of the 450 seats voted in favor of a proposal from the Communist party to remove the case from the agenda
- We believe it is too early to ratify this treaty, we propose to remove it from consideration and to conduct a deeper study of the effects it will have for the Russian Federation, its defense and damage to the Russian economy, said Nikolai Kolomeitsev from the Communist Party at the opening of the plenary session today, reports RIA Novosti.
The Duma will also attach a resolution regarding Russia’s position following the ratification of the sea border treaty with Norway, according to today’s schedule for discussions in the State Duma.
March 25th will with the move go into history as the date when the politicans in two Arctic coastal states for the first time finally agrees on sea border delimitation in the Arctic. The debate in the State Duma is the actucal political handling of the treaty; thereafter it will be sent over to the Federation Council and finally signed into law by Dmitri Medvedev afterwards.
The border deal between Norway and Russia comes after 40 years of negotiations and was first announced during President Dmitri Medvedev’s state visit to Oslo in April last year. The agreement was signed by the two countries Foreign Ministers in Murmansk on September 15th.
See slide-show from the signing ceremony in Murmansk last September.
The Norwegian Storting voted unanimously in favor of the treaty on February 8th. Up-front of today’s ratification by Moscow, both Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitri Medvedev have strongly recommended the parliamentarians to ratify the treaty, putting an end to 40 years of unsolved maritime borders between Norway and Russia in the High North.
