March 30, 2007	Friday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 10, 1428

MOSCOW: If Russia and Latvia have finally settled their 15-year dispute and signed a treaty delineating their common border, it is down to economic pragmatism, say analysts in both countries.

“The signing of the border treaty allowed us to renew our cooperation,” said Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov on Wednesday, a day after he signed the treaty with his visiting Latvian counterpart Aigars Kalvitis.

For his part, Kalvitis had a similar message.

“It is very important for Latvia to have stable and pragmatic relations with Russia,” he said.

It was a measure of the significance of this breakthrough that Kalvitis was received by Russian President Vladimir Putin at his residence at Novo-Ogarevo, near Moscow.

This is, after all, the first official visit to Russia by a Latvia head of government in 13 years. During that period, the two neighbours were locked in a seemingly intractable cycle of political squabbling.

As with its Baltic neighbours Lithuania and Estonia, Latvia’s relations with Russia were fraught with the legacy of the Soviet era, which finally ended in 1991.

When the Baltic states finally broke free from the Soviet Union and regained their independence, Moscow accused them, Latvia in particular, of abusing the rights of the large Russian minorities.

But their presence was itself the legacy of the communist policy of Russification of the Baltics during the occupation, when tens of thousands were deported from the Baltic states and equal numbers of Russians shipped in.

Latvia, like the other Baltic states, has called in vain for an apology from Moscow for the 50 years of Soviet occupation, which began in 1940.

Despite all this, Russia and Latvia had a border agreement ready to be signed as far back as 1997.

But Russia subsequently refused to sign the pact after the Baltic state appended a unilateral declaration that stressed that Latvia had been occupied by the Soviet Union.

Nor did Russia appreciate the Baltic states' increasing rapprochement with the West: all three joined the European Union and the Nato military alliance in 2004.—AFP