Moldovan and Transnistrian officials met in Germany to find solutions for conflict settlement
Moldovan Premier Vlad Filat flew together with the leader of Transnistria Evgeny Shevchuk to Germany yesterday to participate at the OSCE conference in Rottach-Egern, a town close to the German-Austrian border.
According to OSCE, the meetings will last three days and are intended to bring confidence-building measures in the security, social and economic areas.
“We still have much work to do, but with each positive encounter we are building the trust needed to achieve a lasting settlement,” Ambassador Erwan Fouéré, the Special Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office said.
Jennifer Brush, the Head of the OSCE Mission to Moldova said that the meeting demonstrated an improved climate for contract and co-operation across Nistru River to the benefit of the people living on both banks.
According to Romanian Global News citing unknown sources from Chisinau and Berlin, some German officials would have emphasized the need of accepting a federalization format of Moldova.
“German diplomats suggest the usage of other terms than ‘federalization’ which is meant to cover the process with a formula accepted by the population. In other words, the population is to be manipulated in order to accept what Moscow and Berlin want to enjoin,” Romanian Global News reports, without revealing its sources.
Former EU envoy to Moldova Kalman Mizsei previously told Moldova.ORG that Germany’s involvement in the case is a positive thing.
“Given the weight of Germany in the eyes of the Russians within Europe, this is positive. It is important that the German efforts remain embedded in the European foreign policy framework and I feel that this is the case,” Mr. Mizsei said in an interview. According to him, a stronger international involvement in the issue would have “deeper roots and would be healthier.”
The Transnistrian conflict settlement is made within the “5+2” format. It includes representatives of the sides, mediators and observers in the negotiation process - Moldova, Transnistria, Russia, Ukraine and the OSCE (as mediators), and the US and the EU (as observers).
Transnistria is an internationally unrecognized entity proclaimed in Tiraspol on September 2, 1990, initially styled the Moldavian Transnistrian Soviet Socialist Republic. Currently known as the Moldavian Transnistrian Republic, this breakaway entity consists of a narrow strip of land (180 km by 32 km) nestled between the east bank of the Nistru River and the border of Moldova with Ukraine, on a small part of what used to be, between 1924 and 1940, the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.
In 1992 escalated a conflict between Moldova and Russia over this territory. A cease-fire was signed the same year by president of Russia Boris Yeltsin and president of Moldova Mircea Snegur. An agreement to withdraw all Russian forces from the trans-Nistrian districts of the Republic of Moldova was signed by Moldovan Prime Minister Andrei Sangheli and Russian Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin in 1994. It stipulated that the 14th Army was to leave the Republic of Moldova within three years, but the agreement was never ratified by the Duma, Russia’s legislature.
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