Plans for phone connection with Transnistria put off

The project to establish a fixed-line telephone connection between the eastern and the western banks of the Nistru River will have to stay in abeyance because of a lack of will on the part of Transnistria's de facto authorities, Viorel Munteanu, department head at the ICT Ministry, has told Info-Prim Neo. He specified that there was no organizational or technical problem on the part of the Moldovan authorities. “This situation doesn't depend on one side, but on both parties. Last year we had several meetings, but we haven't managed to determine a date when this project might start being implemented. If there were political will from the Transnistrian region, things would have moved on”, said Viorel Munteanu. According to him, the last time when a meeting on the issue was due to take place in December 2010 at the OSCE office in Chisinau, the Transnistrian authorities didn't show up, citing a busy agenda. “We tried to convince them to sit for talks through various international organizations, but not everything depends on us”, said Viorel Munteanu. Several weeks ago, Info-Prim Neo sent an inquiry letter asking Vladimir Belyaev, Transnistria's communications chief, for comments. But the letter, whose receipt was confirmed, has so far remained unanswered. In September 2010 Moldovan PM Vlad Filat and Transnistria's de facto leader Igor Smirnov agreed at an informal meeting on the need to re-establish fixed-line telephone connection between Nistru's banks, which had been cut in 2003 on Tiraspol's initiative. Since then, people on the two banks have been able to communicate only through international mobile calls at expensive rates.