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On 23 January in Vilnius Lithuanian and Russian delegations led by the Lithuanian MFA Undersecretary Darius Jurgelevičius and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Razov held consultations on the issue of transit of Russian citizens via the Lithuanian territory to and from the Kaliningrad Region of the Russian Federation. The Lithuanian delegation confirmed that Lithuania's stance with regard to the solution of the issue of transit between the Kaliningrad Region of the Russian Federation and the mainland Russia remained constructive and flexible as far as it did not infringe upon Lithuania's sovereignty and did not impede its aspirations of accessing to the Schengen Area. The Russian delegation was briefed on the situation at the Lithuanian border after Lithuania launched the implementation of the interim regime of national border control for transit railway passengers as from 1 January 2003 in preparation for new arrangements concerning Russian citizens' transit through the Lithuanian territory, which are to enter into force as from 1 July 2003. It was stated that due to a pro-active information campaign carried out by Lithuania, tensions had been avoided on the state border, and the number of persons unaware of the new requirements of border crossing was insignificant. During the talks, the Russian delegation requested that as from 1 February 2003 Lithuania should accept Russian military IDs and children birth certificates as valid documents for railway transit via the Lithuanian territory in addition to the already recognised transit documents. Besides, the Russian officials requested that Lithuanian state border control officers should not place entry permission stamps on Russian internal passports of transit travellers proceeding via the Lithuanian territory on the grounds of these stamps invalidating Russian internal passports under the current legislation of the Russian Federation. The Lithuanian delegation proposed to settle this issue by amending the relative acts of domestic legislation of the Russian Federation. The Lithuanian negotiators informed their counterparts that Russian military IDs and children birth certificates did not conform to the requirements posed for travel documents and were not recognised by any member state of the Schengen Agreement. However, taking into account the humanitarian aspect of this issue, until 1 July of this year, Lithuania agreed to allow railway transit of children bearing birth certificates and accompanied by at least one of their parents with passport mark naming the children. On the principle of reciprocity, Lithuanian officials requested Russia to recognise the child travel document of the Republic of Lithuania. During the talks, the Lithuanian delegation noted that in implementing the interim regime of national border control for transit railway passengers, Lithuania had followed the spirit of good neighbourhood and friendly relations and had demonstrated maximum flexibility and good will, which made for keeping up the traditional transit passenger flows.