ERR News
The chancellor of justice has spoken up on the question of the border treaty being hashed out with Russia this spring, saying it will not have a bearing on the status of the 1920 treaty, which is considered one of the cornerstones of Estonian statehood.

The Office of the Justice Chancellor, which among other things is responsible for assessing constitutionality, said on Tuesday that the Tartu Peace Treaty, which recognized the borders as they stood at the end of the War of Independence fought with Soviet Russia, was no different from other international border treaties mentioned in the Constitution.

The office - whose duties are ordinarily discharged by Indrek Teder, currently sidelined by a health problem - said that the path of the border could be determined by other treaties, including ones that amended the Tartu treaty.

Such a change would only affect the part of the Tartu treaty that governs the location of the border, said Teder's office.

That would do away with the need to add a separate preamble emphasizing that the Tartu treaty was the "birth certificate" of the Estonian republic restored in 1991. That was something that made Russia balk and walk away in 2005, undoing years of work toward a treaty.

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