Unofficial translation from Russian

On December 9, 2004, in the course of the meetings in Brussels, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Sergey Lavrov handed Ministers of Foreign Affairs Artis Pabriks of the Republic of Latvia and Kristiina Ojuland of the Republic of Estonia the draft political declarations on the principles of relations with these countries. The Russian side suggested that these documents be signed in Moscow on May 10, 2005, at the end of the Russia-Baltic States summit.

The practice of signing documents of this kind is widespread in contemporary Europe. The Russian Federation has such declarations with most European Union countries, including Lithuania. Putting forward this initiative, Russia proceeded from its wish to arrive as a result of joint work at a document which would help close the disputed matters in bilateral relations or indicate ways for their solution and determine the prospect of further joint work so as to transfer bilateral ties into the mainstream of good-neighborliness and mutual benefit.

Up to this moment, neither Riga nor Tallinn have given an official answer in regard to this very same initiative or with respect to the texts of the drafts. Unfortunately, they have chosen instead the path of publicly commenting on them and publishing them in the local media in part or in whole.

In these circumstances the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has taken a decision to publish the full texts of the drafts of these two documents. In so doing Moscow proceeds from the importance of jointly working on the drafts in question for the sake of achieving greater mutual understanding and of bringing relations between our countries to a qualitatively new level.