aaus-list @ ukrainianstudies.org -- [aaus-list] ROMANIA-UKRAINE BORDER PROBLEMS

[Taras Kuzio <t.kuzio@utoronto.ca>]

RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
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RFE/RL NEWSLINE Vol. 6, No. 181, Part II, 25 September 2002



END NOTE

ROMANIA ATTEMPTS TO ALLEVIATE BORDER PROBLEMS WITH UKRAINE

By Taras Kuzio

    The timing of Romanian President Ion Iliescu's visit to
Ukraine on 17-19 September was not unexpected. Ukraine's "Zerkalo
nedeli/Dzerkalo tyzhnya" newspaper predicted as far back as its 8-14
June edition that Romania would be pushed into patching up its border
dispute with Ukraine by the impending November NATO summit in Prague.
    It was therefore somewhat disingenuous of Romanian Foreign
Minister Mircea Geoana to say in August that "Romania is not under
any time pressure from the point of view of European and
Euro-Atlantic integration." In June, Romania presented to NATO its
progress in implementing its Membership Action Plan as the basis for
NATO membership. 
    Romania's actions followed a similar pattern in 1997, when
Bucharest sought to resolve outstanding border problems on the eve of
the Madrid NATO summit. On 28 April 1997, Ukraine and Romania
resolved their border dispute only a day before reformist President
Emile Constantinescu applied for Romania to join NATO. The treaty was
formerly signed in June 1997, a month before the NATO summit, and
went into effect in October of that year. The Romanian Foreign
Ministry complained in 1997 that postcommunists and nationalists who
opposed the border treaty with Ukraine were "circles alien to
Romania's interests that wanted the country to stay outside European
and Euro-Atlantic structures."
    After the signing ceremony, President Constantinescu said
"Romania now fulfils all of the conditions to be accepted in the
first wave." But, even French and Italian lobbying failed to secure
Romania as a candidate for NATO membership in 1997.
    Iliescu's visit to Ukraine last week came after thirteen
rounds of negotiations had failed to reach a breakthrough in the
final obstacle in Romania's border dispute with Ukraine. In 1997 the
existing border was confirmed in the treaty, but the delimitation of
the maritime border was deferred for two years. However, this has yet
to be achieved. 
    Of Ukraine's seven neighbors, Romania has ranked alongside
Russia as the most intransigent over border issues. Both the former
communists led by Iliescu and extreme nationalists, such as the
Greater Romania Party, opposed the 1997 treaty. Only because of a
reformist president and his allies in parliament did the treaty
muster support. The treaty was narrowly ratified by the Romanian
Senate by a vote of 65 to 50, with three abstentions, and in the
lower Chamber of Deputies by a vote of 165 to 92. Three opposition
left and nationalist parties boycotted the signing ceremony
(including Iliescu's party).
    The Romanians were the only one of Ukraine's many national
minorities who called for a boycott of the 1 December 1991 referendum
on Ukrainian independence. In the early 1990s, Romania challenged
Ukraine's right to North Bukovina, which has a Ukrainian majority;
northern and southern Bessarabia; and Hertza and Serpents islands,
which are located 30 kilometers from the Danube River and 120
kilometers from Odesa.
    Soviet forces occupied North Bukovina (now Chernivtsi
Oblast), Bessarabia, and Hertza in 1940 as part of the Nazi-Soviet
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. These regions were confirmed as part of the
USSR by the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty. After 1945, the central
Bessarabian region was added to the interwar Moldavian ASSR, which
had been part of the Ukrainian SSR, to create the Moldavian SSR. The
former Moldavian ASSR, lying to the east of the Dniester River, has
been de facto independent as the diplomatically unrecognized
Transdniester Republic since seceding from Moldova in 1990-92.
    Although Romania and the USSR successfully demarcated their
land border, they did not do the same for the maritime border in the
Serpents Island region. By 1995 the Romanian-Ukrainian dispute over
this maritime region flared up anew as Romania sought to appeal to
the International Court of Justice. In a December 1995 statement, the
Ukrainian Foreign Ministry claimed that Romania's actions "qualify as
an effort to raise territorial claims against Ukraine."
    In response to Romania's territorial claims, Ukraine built up
military installations on Serpents Island, although the 1997 treaty
forbade Ukraine from placing "offensive weapons" there. Ukraine built
a modern wharf, seismic station, wind-and-diesel power station,
modernized military barracks, and a telephone communications network.
The military installations are to be closed down this year. In May,
the Ukrainian government earmarked 161 million hryvni ($32 million)
to expand infrastructure, communications, and economic activities on
Serpents Island, as well as to demilitarize it. These government
plans cover improving border protection of Serpents Island's
continental shelf and territorial waters.
    The dispute between Ukraine and Romania over Serpents Island
resembles recent disputes over similar small uninhabited small, rocky
islands between Greece and Turkey (Imia in Greek/Kardak in Turkish)
and Morocco and Spain (Leila in Moroccan/Perejil in Spanish). The
major difference is that in the mid-1990s, 17 major oil and gas
deposits were discovered in the Serpents Islands region.
    Besides Serpents Island, two other problems have bedeviled
Romanian-Ukrainian relations. First, the status of the 325,000 ethnic
Moldovans and 35,000 ethnic Romanians in Ukraine. Geoana accused the
Ukrainians of continuing to implement "Stalin's theory about the
existence of a Moldovan language and a Moldovan nation," which he
believes is "fiction." Romania's postcommunists therefore hold
similar views to the country's nationalists that Ukraine has in
reality 460,000 "Romanians" (not 135,000, as per the 1989 Soviet
census). Within Moldova, only nationalists back this viewpoint while
postcommunist centrists support a policy of "one people, two states"
and the left sees Moldovans as a completely separate people, as in
the former USSR. 
    The second issue is the reciprocity of rights for Romanian
and Ukrainian minorities in Ukraine and Romania, respectively. The
1997 treaty included -- on Romania's insistence -- the Council of
Europe's Recommendation 1201 allowing for territorial autonomy,
following opposition by Bucharest to the inclusion of that
recommendation in the treaty it signed with Hungary relating to the
rights of ethnic Hungarians in Romania. Romania has demanded the
establishment of a "multicultural" university in Chernivtsi (in
Romanian Cernauti) while refusing to open a Hungarian equivalent in
Transylvania. 
    In Ukraine, the Romanian minority has 20 newspapers,
journals, television, and radio programs. Romanian-language schools
exist in every region where Romanians and Moldovans reside. In
Romania, on the other hand, there is only one Ukrainian-language
school, which was reopened in 1997, that caters to 10, 000 Ukrainian
school pupils. Ukrainian-language textbooks encounter publishing
difficulties and Ukrainian television and radio programs are rare.
    During President Iliescu's visit last week the two sides
agreed to settle the final section of their border dispute by June
2003. It remains to be seen if they will in fact manage to do so,
after the failure of the two-year period between 1997-99 set for this
same purpose. 

Dr. Taras Kuzio is a resident fellow at the Centre for
Russian and East European studies and adjunct staff in the Department
of Political Science, University of Toronto.



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