OSCE Secretary General to visit Moldova, including Transnistria
Moldovan President Nicolae Timofti will welcome OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier in Chisinau on July 16. The OSCE official is going to make a trip to Moldova and Transnistria for two days to discuss OSCE work and the Transnistrian settlement process.
According to a press release, meetings are scheduled with President Nicolae Timofti, Prime Minister Vlad Filat Speaker of Parliament Marian Lupu, Deputy Prime Minister and Chief Negotiator Eugen Carpov and Foreign Minister Iurie Leanca, as well as with Mihail Formuzal, Bashkan of Gagauzia.
The high official will meet with Evgheny Shevchuk, the so-called president of Transnistria and so-called Minister of Foreign Affairs Nina Shtanski. Mr. Zannier will also meet Ambassadors of the mediators and observers in the settlement process, as well as with civil society representatives and OSCE staff in Chisinau, Bender and Tiraspol.
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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