Baltic States – CIS, Estonia, Legislation, Transport

"The most important problem in the sense of guarding the border is that the Estonian-Russian border treaty is not ratified. Thus the Estonian-Russian temporary control line is being guarded. The state border has not been fully developed, and specifically not marked either," Kohv said in an interview to public radio Vikerraadio.

"When the ratification is once reached, construction of the border facilities will start, which should make the work of the border guards easier."

The prefect said that today's temporary control line is marked out only with the Russian Federation border markers, but when the agreement enters into force, the area will be cleared of trees, Estonian border posts will also be installed and then it will be easier to understand for people where the border is.

The four-hour meeting of Estonian and Russian border representatives on Monday in the Security Police employee Eston Kohver case ended without results. A new meeting is scheduled for today.

"Largely, we are in the state that Russia accepts the border incident as such or illegal border crossing. The question is about other circumstances stated in the legal instrument, it ha sto be made sure that the Russian representative agreed to this too," said Kohv.

The legal instrument stipulates that the event took place in the Estonian side and the illegal border crossing took place with the direction of Russia-Estonia-Russia. "There is no dispute about border crossing as a fact, the dispute is about the direction of the border crossing and other details," said Kohv.

KaPo official Eston Kohver was abducted on Friday at Luhamaa, near the Estonian-Russian border, and was forcibly taken to Russia; on Saturday the Moscow Lefortovo District Court confirmed that Kohver was taken into custody in connection with an espionage investigation. Friday afternoon, after Kohver was abducted, and before it became known who did it and at what circumstances, representatives of border authorities of Estonia and Russia visited the site and drew up a legal instrument in which they set down the details of the incident as it looked then. Later, Russian officials refused to agree to the document.