|
Analysis: Serpents
Island, Bystraya Canal, And Ukrainian-Romanian
Relations
|
The Danube River Delta is home to over 300
species of birds and 90 secies of fish. |
| Relations between
Bucharest and Kyiv have been strained for some time over their
inability to reach an agreement concerning the delimitation of the
continental shelf around Serpents Island (Zmiyinyy Ostrov) in the
Black Sea, and that dispute is likely to end before the
International Court of Justice in The Hague. Relations have
deteriorated further recently over Ukraine's construction of a canal
that will facilitate access to and from the Black Sea via the Danube
River, but at the same time, Romania claims, would destroy the
Danube Delta's unique ecosystem. Inauguration of the Bystraya Canal
is scheduled for 24 August -- Ukraine's Independence Day --
according to Romanian media reports. At stake are two elements of
strategic importance: the discovery of oil and gas reserves
surrounding the island and the location of the planned canal, which
would facilitate control of the Danube's mouth by a non-NATO
member.
The small, barren island (17
hectares, with a perimeter of 1,973 meters) is situated at the east
of the Danube's River mouth, 44.8 kilometers from the Romanian port
of Sulina. The island was mentioned frequently in works by ancient
Greek writers, when it was called Leuke, or the White Island. This
is due to its calcareous geological structure. The Greeks built on
the island a temple dedicated to Achilles, the mythological hero of
Homer's "Iliad." The temple was destroyed in 1837 by Russian
sailors, who used its stones for the construction of a lighthouse.
The name Serpents Island may be traced back to the 14th-century
period of Genovese dominance over the Black Sea, and is apparently
due to the many reptiles found by the Genovese sailors in the
ancient Greek temple's water reservoirs. The island itself lacks
fresh water, however, and this is one of the reasons that until
recently it was never inhabited.
Romanian (Moldavian and
Wallachian) princes ruled over the island in medieval times, but
Russian efforts to take control of it, if not de jure, than de
facto, by simply occupying it can be traced back to the early 19th
century. The first time Serpents Island was mentioned in an
international treaty was in 1878, when the Berlin peace treaty
concluded by Europe's then great powers included the island into
Romania, whose independence from the Turks was recognized in that
document.
The 1940 Soviet ultimatum to Romania, which led to
the incorporation of Bessarabia, northern Bukovina, and the Herta
district into the Soviet Union, made no mention of Serpents Island.
It was only in August 1944 that Red Army troops occupied the island,
just a few days after Romania had switched sides to the Allies.
Still, the peace treaty concluded in Paris between Romania and the
Allies on 10 February 1947 made no mention of the barren island
either. The border between Romania and the Soviet Union as defined
in that document ran north of Serpents Island, leaving it in
Romanian territory. But the island remained under de facto Soviet
occupation from 1944 to 1948. Romania agreed to cede it to Soviet
control de jure in February 1948, after a visit to Moscow by its
first communist prime minister, Petru Groza. An official protocol
stipulating the transfer of sovereignty was signed on the island
itself by the country's Deputy Foreign Minister Eduard Mezincescu on
23 May 1948. Moscow thus gained what at that time seemed to be
"only" a strategic asset -- control over navigation at the Danube
River's mouth.
Following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet
Union, Serpents Island became Ukrainian territory. Kyiv inherited
from the Soviet Union not only the island, but also Moscow's
position on the delimitation of the continental shelf. The two
communist "sister countries" -- Romania and the Soviet Union --had
unsuccessfully negotiated the delimitation of the shelf from 1967 to
1987. The negotiations were resumed between Bucharest and Kyiv, but
by now they had acquired new, higher stakes -- the discovery of oil
and gas reserves surrounding the island. The 1997 basic treaty
concluded by the two countries stipulates that negotiations on the
shelf's delimitation will continue and, if no agreement is reached,
the sides will be able to appeal to the International Court of
Justice in The Hague as a last resort. Ukraine agreed under that
treaty to deploy no "aggressive weapons" on Serpents Island, and,
more importantly, to consider it "uninhabited." Under international
maritime legislation that means Kyiv could not claim an exclusive
economic zone around the island.
But that is precisely what
Ukraine did. Whether weapons meanwhile deployed on the island are or
not "aggressive" is a matter of definition. But in order to
transform the territory's status, as the Romanian daily "Evenimentul
zilei" wrote on 11 August, Ukraine manned the island, is regularly
transporting water to it, and a ship is providing regular service
between the mainland and the island. Some 20 negotiation meetings
conducted thus far between Bucharest and Kyiv have produced no
results.
Against this background, what are the reasons for
construction of the Bystraya Canal? One possible reason could rest
in a bogus compromise. As "Evenimentul zilei" put it, Ukraine --
apparently in order to pressure Romania to give up any claim on the
territorial shelf -- is simply preparing the ground for making a
"concession" to Romania: halting use of the canal.
Kyiv, of
course, it not presenting the canal in this light. It claims (as
Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Oleksandr Motsyk put it at a
Bucharest meeting of the Danube Cooperation Process on 14 July) that
the canal construction is merely the reopening of a project
abandoned during the Soviet era that will provide improved access to
the Black Sea, thus helping develop a socially and economically poor
region of Ukraine. But the canal's advantages for Ukraine are above
all strategic rather than economic. It would provide Ukraine with an
additional outlet to the Black Sea.
Romania has meanwhile
become a NATO member, while Ukraine has apparently given up on
becoming one. This means that the canal's strategic importance might
be greater than first realized, and that its construction is not
merely a bluff. Otherwise, why would Kyiv risk international protest
and opprobrium, which the canal's construction has triggered, and
why would it spend apparently considerable amounts on financing its
construction by a German company?
Finally, according to
Romanian media reports, the Bystraya Canal will cause Romania annual
losses of at least $1.5 million, as international shipping to and
from the Danube River and the Black Sea would have an alternative
route to the Sulina branch of the Danube River Delta. The Ukrainians
have already announced that they will charge considerably less than
Romania for transit fees.
|
|