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Dear Colleagues, Here are some recent boundary/sovereignty items that may be of interest. Two extensive, but relatively quiescent, sovereignty disputes have resurfaced. The Syrian-Turkish dispute over the region of Hatay, which includes the city of Iskenderun, became an issue on 13 March, when Turkey objected to the inclusion of the region in a Syrian map distributed at the International Tourism Fair in Berlin. Syria claims Hatay, which the French ceded to Turkey in 1939. In a 19 March radio address, Venezuelan President Chavez objected to plans by a US company to build a satellite launch site in the Essequibo region of Guyana. Venezuela claims about 130,000 km of Guyana (up to the Essequibo River). In other boundary developments, China, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have agreed in principle on the location of their tripoint. The official treaty is to be signed in May. On 23 March, the North Korean navy proclaimed one-mile-wide "navigation zones" around the Yellow Sea islands that it disputes with South Korea. It also reiterated its sovereignty claim to the ROK-administered islands. In mid-March the Turkmenistan Foreign Minister announced that his government had approached Iran about exploiting the Serdar/Kyapaz deposit in the Caspian Sea, which is claimed by Azerbaijan. Also this month, the Georgia-Russia joint boundary commission discussed delimiting various segments of their land and sea boundaries. The sides signed protocols regarding future work. For details about the above and other news, please visit our webpage (www.boundaries.com/bits.htm). Regards, Dan Dzurek %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%