Transnistria: EU’s approach towards Transnistrian conflict resolution is unacceptable
The administration of Transnistria, Moldova’s breakaway region, says that the policies enacted by the European Union towards the Transnistrian conflict resolution makes it difficult to get to a compromise between Tiraspol and Chisinau.
The so-called minister of foreign affairs of the separatist region Nina Shtanski said in an interview for Ukraine’s “Glavcom” newspaper that the lifting of travel restrictions for some leaders of Transnistria to travel to the EU is “unacceptable.” She thinks that such a move is insufficient because the travel sanctions were not fully removed.
“Analyzing the content of the official document, its provisions seem to be kind of an ‘award’ for the progress registered during the negotiations,” Nina Shtanski said. “Tiraspol deems this step insufficient. The sanctions were not entirely removed and the list of persons who are still banned to travel to EU remains incomplete. We find the approach used by Brussels as inacceptable for the Moldovan-Transnistrian dialogue.”
The leaders from separatist region of Transnistria are now travelling easier in the European Union after the Council of EU has lifted on at the end of September the travel ban imposed in 2003. At that time 17 people responsible for the lack of cooperation to promote a political settlement of the conflict were banned from entering EU, the Council said in a press release.
“This acknowledges progress seen under the new leadership in negotiating certain aspects of a settlement of the Transnistrian conflict within the "5+2" framework,” the press service of the Council of EU said in a press release.
Moldova is the last country in Europe with Russian troops stationed there.
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.
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).
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