Joint Control Commission is inefficient owing to Transnistrian conflict mediators' attitude, Commission member Ion Leahu

[The Republic of Moldova at an intersection of years – Info-Prim Neo survey] “The Joint Control Commission (JCC) is the only organization empowered to ensure the observance of human rights and security in the Transnistrian region. But it does not manage to do it probably because the guarantors do not want it,” the member of the Commission on behalf of Chisinau Ion Leahu told Info-Prim Neo. According to him, the Commission's work in 2009 was inefficient. He said that for the Commission to work efficiently and solve problems, the mediators should change their attitude. “All the parties involved, especially the Russian Federation and Ukraine, must assume responsibility for the unconditional observance of the Moldovan-Russian agreement of 1992,” Leahu said. The most serious problem faced by the JCC in 2009, according to Leahu, was the October 30 event, when the commander of the peacekeeping forces on behalf of the official Chisinau, Colonel Aurel Fondos, had been detained at one of the Transnistrian customs posts set up in the security zone for more than five hours. “This incident hindered the whole peacekeeping operation. As the Transnistrians, who are the illegal element in the process, had such an attitude towards a commander of the peacekeeping operation, the operation cannot be considered legal or efficient,” he said. “Many problems have not been solved. Consequently, the rights and interests of a large part of the Moldovan population were affected. A number of documents could not be adopted, including the regulations for military observers. As the regulations were not modified and complemented, the separatist institutions in the security zone continue to mistreat the Moldovan population,” Leahu said. He also said that a number of other documents were not adopted and it is now hard to regulate the relations between the police and militia in Tighina, where the police department is permanently under attack, and in Dorotskaya, where the illegal customs post does not allow the people to move freely. “These two points are very vulnerable as the employees of the given institutions are armed and the escalation of the conflict can lead to unpredictable consequences,” Leahu considers. He stressed that the problem of penitentiaries in Tighina was neither solved and the prisoners continue to live without water, electric power, heating and sewerage as in 2003. At the end of last year, Info-Prim Neo published the statements about the Commission's work in 2009 made by Oleg Beleakov, the co-president of the Joint Control Commission on behalf of Transnistria. According to Beleakov, the current peacekeeping operation in the security zone is efficient and there is no need to change its format. The Moldovan authorities has pleaded for the transformation the present format of the peacekeeping operation into a civilian operation involving international observers. The Joint Control Commission was constituted in 1992 under an agreement singed by Moldova and Russia. It consists of delegations of Moldova, Russia and Transnistrian. Military specialists of Ukraine and representatives of the OSCE Mission to Moldova attend the Commission's meetings as observers. The Commission coordinates the work of the peacekeeping forces in the security zone. The political talks in the 5+2 format on the settlement of the Transnistrian conflict involve representatives of Chisinau and Tiraspol as the conflicting sides, of Russia, Ukraine and OSCE as mediators, and of the EU and U.S. as observers.