The relevant committees of the Russian parliament's upper house are going to discuss the 1990 USSR-US agreement establishing the maritime border in the Bering Strait on January 27, after its legitimacy was recently put into question, a senior lawmaker told Sputnik on Tuesday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st January, 2020) The relevant committees of the Russian parliament's upper house are going to discuss the 1990 USSR-US agreement establishing the maritime border in the Bering Strait on January 27, after its legitimacy was recently put into question, a senior lawmaker told Sputnik on Tuesday.
Russian lawmakers earlier proposed to review the legal aspects of the deal, which Moscow has yet to ratify. According to Boris Nevzorov, senator from the Kamchatka territory, there was a chance that then-USSR Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze might have deliberately conceded some 30,000 square miles in the Bering Sea, including areas rich with natural resources, to the United States. Shevardnadze became Georgian president after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
"We have planned a joint meeting of relevant committees on January 27, where we will discuss the Bering Strait delimitation agreement with the United States," the head of the upper house's committee on agriculture and food policy and environmental management, Alexei Mayorov, said.
Representatives of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Agriculture Ministry, Federal Security Service and Federal Agency for Fisheries will participate in the discussion, he added.
He also said that the upper house would likely send recommendations to the government after the meeting.
Valentina Matviyenko, chairwoman of the upper house, has said that she could potentially report the discussion results to the president.
