MOSCOW -- Russian lawmakers claimed Friday the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol was a Russian city, reviving a simmering territorial spat between the two Slavic neighbors over the disputed Crimean Peninsula and causing outrage in Ukraine.
Parliament passed a resolution declaring that Sevastopol was a Russian town, telling the Russian Central Bank to take charge of the city's financing and ordering the Russian constitution changed to give the port federal status.
Representatives from Sevastopol sitting in the gallery clapped and cheered as lawmakers voted 157-3 to adopt the controversial ruling in its first reading. A second vote was unanimous.
The Russian Parliament even went so far as to ask Ukraine to withdraw a special forces contingent from Sevastopol.
The moves are bound to sour relations already strained by a lingering quarrel over how to divide the Black Sea Fleet. Both former Soviet republics claim the 350-ship fleet, but the two presidents have agreed to divide it in half.
Sevastopol is headquarters for the fleet, so the Parliament decision to declare the city Russian further complicates the fight over the fleet.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Anatoly Zlenko said the Russian Parliament action amounts to Moscow intervening in Ukraine's internal affairs.
A leading Ukrainian legislator went further. Dmitro Pavlychko, head of the parliamentary commission on international affairs, said the move by Russian lawmakers was 'tantamount to a declaration of war against Ukraine.'
The Ukrainian Parliament 'will defend itself accordingly,' Pavlychko told the Interfax news agency.
The Russian Parliament action is a non-binding resolution and it does not reflect the views of the Kremlin. President Boris Yeltsin has said Russia has no territorial claims on Ukraine, though the Parliament vote is certain to cause tension.
Meanwhile, a Russian official lashed out at Ukraine for proclaiming itself owner of the nuclear weapons it inherited from the former Soviet Union, saying this did not square with Kiev's commitment to pursue non- nuclear status.
'A logical question arises,' Foreign Ministry spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky told journalists. 'How does this fit in with the international obligations taken on by Ukraine with regard to its non- nuclear status?'
Yastrzhembsky referred to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Kiev has pledged to join, and which stipulates that Russia is the only former Soviet republic allowed to keep its nuclear weapons.
Ukraine has promised to ratify that treaty as well as the START I nuclear arms reduction treaty, but recently its leaders have said the republic should declare its remaining nuclear arms national property until they are destroyed.
The new line contradicts earlier pledges that Kiev would transfer all its strategic nuclear weapons to Russia for dismantling, and is being seen as an attempt by Ukraine to squeeze extra security guarantees and financial compensation from the West before it relinquishes its weapons.
Yevgeny Pudovkin, head of a commission set up by Parliament to investigate Sevastopol's status, told lawmakers that Russia had never given up sovereignty over the port, nor passed its ownership rights to another power.
Sevastopol is the main port on the Crimean Peninsula, which was split off from Russia and given to Ukraine by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1954, even though most of its 2.4 million people are ethnic Russians.
Pudovkin's commission bases their claim on a document from 1948 which turned Sevastopol into a distinct administrative and economic unit directly controlled by Moscow.
They say that since the Soviet Union's breakup Russia has been without a large Black Sea port, with its only existing port in the region, Novorossiisk, ill-equipped to act as the country's Black Sea fleet base.
They also stress that from 1948 until 1968 Sevastopol was financed out of the Russian budget, rather than from central Soviet funds, and that to this day the Russian Central Bank provides 85 percent of the port's funding.
Russian nationalists in Crimea have demanded a referendum to determine whether the peninsula should stay in Ukraine, secede or merge with Russia. But Kiev has imposed a moratorium on all plebiscites in the region.
Recently officers of the Black Sea fleet protested a decision by Kiev and Moscow to split the fleet in half by unilaterally hoisting the St. Andrew's ensign on their ships, in a mass display of allegiance to Russia.
Pudovkin said his commission had consulted with Crimean lawmakers, 70 percent of whom said they supported giving Sevastopol Russian status, creating confederative relations with Russia and introducing dual Russian-Ukrainian citizenship.
Parliament also instructed the government to hold talks with Ukraine on Sevastopol's status and set up a parliamentary delegation to take part in the talks which would include several hard-line nationalist lawmakers.
