RUSSIAN OFFICIAL: MOSCOW WILL NEVER RECOGNIZE TARTU TREATY.

Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Krylov said that Moscowwould never recognize its 1920 Tartu Treaty as the basis of itsrelations with Estonia or as the defining document on the Russian-Estonianborder, BNS reported June 27. Tallinn has insisted on recognitionof the treaty–even if not on the return of land that Stalin tookfrom Estonia at the end of World War II–because of its commitmentto the principle of state continuity between the Soviet occupationin 1940 and the restoration of independence in 1991. Meanwhile,Russian border guards completed the marking of the water borderbetween the two countries on Lake Peipus.

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