NATO Takes No Sides Yet in the Romania-Ukraine Border Row

If Romania expected NATO to take a tough stance and support it into its row with Ukraine over the Bystroe channel, well, then Romania was wrong. "The Bystroe channel is not an issue for the Alliance, but one for the bilateral relations of the two countries," said NATO Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

Scheffer clearly stated that NATO will not get between Ukraine and Romania to solve the issue of Ukraine dragging the Bystroe channel, in the Danube Delta.

"When a country becomes member of the Alliance this is not to say that the problems it has with its neighbors automatically become problems for the Alliance to solve," Scheffer explained.
In August the Romanian minister of foreign affairs, Mircea Geoana, sent a note to NATO, informing the Alliance about the border issue arisen between Romania and Ukraine.

For his part, Jonathan Eyal, British political analyst of Romanian origin, said on national radio that if all other negotiation and mediation procedures fail, Romania will find help inside the NATO framework. Geoana said Romania will not fail to take all measures consistent with its rights and obligations as a sovereign state to defend its borders, no matter the course Ukraine’s actions will take.
Geoana said that Ukraine took out one of the buoys it placed illegally in Romanian territorial waters, and that this might have been a sign that Romania’s Eastern neighbor started to cooperate. "We will see if it’s indeed so," said Geoana to Rompres wire service.

The situation on the Danube is not all good.
Romanian border police said that it had to intervene four times in the past five days to stop Ukrainian boats placing buoys in Romanian territorial waters. According to BBC, the Romanian patrol ships placed themselves across the Danube flow, to stop the Ukrainian ships from advancing. The head of the border police, Aurel Neagu, said that forces in that section of the Danube had been supplemented and have now three big ships, two medium sized, and seven small ones to patrol the waters.

Tensions between Romania and Ukraine are on the rise.
The Romanian ambassador to Kiev, Alexandru Cornea, was summoned yesterday at the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs after one Romanian border police ship allegedly prevented a Ukrainian ship to cruise on the Danube, Mediafax wire service reported.
According to the Ukrainians, on October 9 the Romanian border police "blocked the passage for the Ukrainian cruise ship Volga on the main navigation route and deliberately failed to communicate via radio with both the Ukrainian ship and the Ukrainian authorities," a press-release from the foreign ministry in Kiev said.
The Ukrainians also said that the Romanian border police "forced the captain of the Volga ship to leave the main navigation route thus endangering the ship and the lives of the passengers, who were German citizens in their great majority."