Acting president says CIS "obsolete" but beneficial to Moldova
It is beneficial to Moldova to be a member of the CIS even though this organization is "becoming obsolete", the acting president and parliament speaker, Mihai Ghimpu, said at a news conference on the results of the CIS summit in Chisinau on 9 October.
"I remember saying during the election campaign that the CIS is an old woman on a deathbed. But this does not mean (we are) leaving the CIS," he told journalists who reminded him of the statements he made during the recent parliamentary election campaign. He said that "it is beneficial to Moldova to be a member of the CIS, working under previous economic schemes". He said the republic needs financial assistance from CIS donor states.
Speaking at his meeting with Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev at the summit, he said he told Medvedev that the new Moldovan leadership was planning to build good relations with Russia. He said that Moldova, suffering from the global crisis, is interested in receiving a 150m-dollar loan from Russia, which is planned to be transferred by the end of the year.
"Our country needs this loan, taking into account that the deficit of the republic's budget is 8bn lei (482m euros)," Ghimpu said.
After talking to Medvedev, Ghimpu said: "I understood that for Russian troops and ammunition to leave the Moldovan territory, we are to guarantee neutrality and non-accession to NATO".
"There is a constitutional guarantee that the neutral Moldova may not enter military blocs," he said, adding that "the right to be or not to be in NATO is an exclusive right of the Moldovan nation, which can be expressed at a referendum". Ghimpu did not rule out a possibility of holding a referendum of this kind.
Speaking about ways of settling the Dniester conflict between Moldova and its breakaway Dniester region, Ghimpu did not agree with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov who said in Chisinau that the Dniester conflict settlement plan developed by the Moldovan and Dniester leaders and mediated by Russian administration deputy head Dmitriy Kozak in 2003 was still actual.
ITAR-TASS, Russian state news agency
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