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First pillar to be installed at Ukraine-Belarus border Wed

The sides set about designating the line of the Ukraine-Belarus state border on terrain on October 1

KIEV, November 13, 6:25 /ITAR-TASS/. The first border pillar will be installed at the Ukraine-Belarus state border on Wednesday. It will be officially inaugurated in the area of the international borde-crossing station Senkovka, Chernigov region, by the Foreign Ministers of Ukraine and Belarus, Leonid Kozhara and Vladimir Makei.

A Protocol on an Exchange of Ratification Instruments of the Treaty between the two countries "On the State Border", dated May 12, 1997, was signed in June this year during the official visit to Ukraine by President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus.

The sides set about designating the line of the Ukraine-Belarus state border on terrain on October 1. They carried out work to prepare for installing the first border marker at the junction of the borders of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia.

"The completion of the legal-treaty formalization of the Ukrainian state border creates conditions for a subsequent progress in the Ukraine-European Union dialgue on the liberalizatio of the visa regime, as well as for a more effective interregional and cross-borde interaction with the neighbouring countries," maintains Yevgeny Perebeinos, director of the Foreign Ministry department on information policy.

Leonid Osavolyuk, representative of Ukraine for the legal-treaty formalization of the state border, had said earlier that Ukraine hopes for the European Commission's technical assistance in the demarcation of the Ukrainian-Belarusian sector of the border under the Eastern Partnership programme. He said a regular round of talks on the matter are due to be held on December 18.

The overall length of Ukraine's land borders is about 5,638 km. Ukraine-Russia border is 2,295 km long, including a 321-km sea border. Ukraine-Belarus joint border stretches for 1,084 km,

Wthin the framework of demarcation of the joint border, Ukraine and Russia installed the first border post on November 7 in the Bryansk-Chernigov sector where the borders of the three states converge.

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