ran Bay and maritime access to
Slovenia and several villages to Croatia, remains unratified and in
dispute; as a member state that forms part of the EU's external
border, Slovenia must implement the strict Schengen border rules to
curb illegal migration and commerce through southeastern Europe
while encouraging close cross-border ties with Croatia

Solomon Islands
Australian Defense Force leads the Regional
Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI) at the invitation
of the Solomon Islands' Government to maintain civil and political
order and reinforce regional security

Somalia
"Somaliland" secessionists provide port facilities to
land-locked Ethiopia and establish commercial ties with regional
states; "Puntland" and "Somaliland" "governments" seek support from
neighboring states in their secessionist aspirations and in
conflicts with each other; Ethiopia has only an administrative line
with the Oromo region of southern Somalia and maintains alliances
with local Somali clans opposed to the unrecognized Somali Interim
Government, which plans eventual relocation from Kenya to Mogadishu;
rival militia and clan fighting in southern Somalia periodically
spills over into Kenya; most of the remaining 23,000 Somali refuges
in Ethiopia are expected to be repatriated in 2005

South Africa
South Africa has placed military along the border to
stem the thousands of Zimbabweans fleeing to find work and escape
political persecution; managed dispute with Namibia over the
location of the boundary in the Orange River

South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands
Argentina, which claims
the islands in its constitution and briefly occupied the islands by
force in 1982, agreed in 1995 to no longer seek settlement by force

Southern Ocean
Antarctic Treaty defers claims (see Antarctica
entry), but Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, NZ, Norway, and UK
assert claims (some overlapping), including the continental shelf in
the Southern Ocean; several states have expressed an interest in
extending those continental shelf claims under the United Nations
Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to include undersea
ridges; the US and most other states do not recognize the land or
maritime claims of other states and have made no claims themselves
(the US and Russia have reserved the right to do so); no formal
claims exist in the waters in the sector between 9