Mt Paektu: there has been a NK/Ch agreement, to split the mountain in half.
You can visit the lake fomr either country. China is making a real tourist
kitchy thing of it with cablecars etc. Yuk.
My Korean contact knows the mountain is dividedi n half, but suspects the
lake waters are a condo. He says while the NK-Rus boundary and
Chinese-Russian boundaries in rivers use the midpoint or thalweg, the
NK-Chin river boundaries are on each country's bank, with the waters
themselves as a condo.
Moldov-Ukr enclave: old soviet atlases fomr the 1950s etc show numerous
enclaves between SSRs that no longer exist: Kaz-Rus and Karelia
(A)SSR-Russia, and the one Moldoa-Ukrain are some of them. The Ruskis
changed internal boundaries fairly frequently so these came and went. I
await some scholar producing an atlas of soviet internal boundaries, at
least at SSR level with all documents in translation.
Any takers?
Vimy: The Commonwealth War Grave Commission has control over Commonwealth
graves in Africa, Europe, Middle East etc. NZ, Austrlaia, Canada and UK
control this, and have sections of their govts that maintain the graves.
Austrlaia maintians the war graves at Katchanaburi(?) in Thailand for
example.
Placesl ike Vimy, St Quentin and other associated with a particular
commonwealrth country may well have signs and placenamesa that commemorate
their liberators. There are "Rue de Nouvelle Zealandes" in small French
villages for example, and St Quentin has an Australia gate i believe.
Thus it would not surprise me if signage has a Canadian look to it. Partly
out5 of repsect for the past, and partly to promote tourism, which to these
small villages comes fomr the veterans and their relatives.
There is a huge ANZAC pilgrimage to Gallipoli for example.
So these would be quasi-enclaves, real estate owned by the respective
governments in some capacity. Not real enclaves.
Compare the Ecuadorian cemetery i Peru, owned by Ecuador, as part of their
final peace treaty and boundary delimitation in 1999(?).
Vennbahn: I will have to recheck my documents again Len. I suggest you
contact rudi Longueville in Belgium who would probably know in more detail.
My translations of the treaties are pretty rough, but I am presuming that
Bewlgium has full and proper sovereignty over the rila line and its
undersoil, although it did agree to maintian the line in accordance with
German signage, regulations etc. That is less an infringement of sovereignty
than a practical measure given the nature of the boundary. To resign all the
stations with Franch names, ie Montoie instead of monschau would be spiteful
given that thew patronage of the stations was 99% German. Those clauses just
helped maintain a sensible working relationship and prevented any nasty rail
official in Belgium deciding to try and needle the German residents
dependent on the now-Belgian railway. None of the clauses seem excessive.
given the bad feelings on each side immediately after the war, it was
sensible for officials at a high level to spell out what could and oculd not
be done on the railway, to prevent any minor incidents provoking unrest and
tension.
But i will reread my material in the next few weeks and check this again.
BW
_________________________________________________________________
Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger:
http://messenger.msn.com