RIGA, February 19 (RIA Novosti) - Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga has signed into law a bill that delegates the right to sign a border treaty with Russia to the Cabinet, thus paving the way to the settlement of a long-running territorial dispute between the two ex-Soviet states, her office said Monday.
The accord on the demarcation of the Baltic nation's borders with Russia was initialed in 1997, but remains unsigned to this day owing to a territorial dispute over a swathe of land in Russia's northwest, which was taken over by the Soviet Union at the end of WWII.
Russia refused to sign the treaty after Latvia supplemented it with a unilateral declaration reinstating its claims to the area.
Latvian Prime Minister Aigars Kalvitis said earlier that stalled negotiations on the border treaty will resume as soon as his Cabinet receives a mandate to sign it, and that the agreement could be signed later this spring.
