The 27th OSCE Ministerial Council held under the ageist of the Albanian OSCE Chairmanship approved a new statement on the Transnistrian settlement talks in the 5+2 format. The officials of the 57 states called on the sides to organize a new round of talks based on a results-centered approach in 2021, as swiftly as possible, IPN reports.

In the virtual meeting held on December 3-4, the officials of the 57 OSCE participating states reaffirmed the importance of the talks in the 5+2 format as a common dialogue mechanism for the comprehensive and sustainable resolution of the Transnistrian dispute. The sides were urged to further become involved in an appropriate way during this year’s Swedish OSCE Chairmanship too.

The Bureau of Reintegration said the sides were also encouraged to step up interaction and coordination in the management of challenges generated by the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting the importance of ensuring permanent interconnection between the two sides of the Nistru and urging to make constructive efforts to swiftly restore the free of movement.

The sides were also urged to step up the dialogue and efforts to ensure the protection of human rights and to launch new common initiatives designed to promote the confidence-building measures based on the progress made in implementing the Berlin Plus Package.

The statement stresses the necessity of strengthening the commitments agreed on priority issues and of ensuring the implementation of all the agreements stipulated in the protocols of the rounds of the 5+2 talks held in Rome in 2018, in Vienna in 2017 and in Berlin in 2016.

The OSCE Ministerial Council called on the sides to continue the efforts at all the negotiation levels, in a sustained manner, so as to achieve tangible results on all the three baskets of the negotiation agenda: socioeconomic problems; general legal, humanitarian and human rights aspects; comprehensive settlement of the conflict, including institutional, political and security aspects.