Transnistrian conflict cannot be regulated within unitary state – Russian minister

The Transnistrian conflict cannot be settled down as long as Moldova insists on its regulation within unitary state formula, Russian Foreign Minister Serghei Lavrov stated at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), held on Monday, 29 May, in Moscow. „It is odd that many western politicians salute closing borders and imposing the new customs regime for Transnistria. Nobody can imagine that in Kosovo region such regulations would exist. One can notice double standards applied for the Transnistrian conflict, leading to worsening the situation,” Lavrov noted. According to the Russian diplomat, the military troops that Russia obliged to evacuate at the summit in Istanbul in 1999 have been evacuated a long time ago. „Only peace-keeping forces are in Transnistria, plus 500-600 soldiers, guarding the biggest ammunitions stock of Europe,” the Russian official mentioned. He highlighted that, since 2003, ammunitions evacuation of Transnistria was suspended because of the lack of an agreement in this sense. „Transnistria needed guarantees in order „not to be swallowed by Moldova” as a unitary state”, Lavrov said. Two months ago, the Russian minister of defense Serghei Ivanov stated that the Russian Federation suspended the munitions’ evacuation process, because authorities of Tiraspol „did not allow” this. According to the Russian official, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation withdrew out of Transnistria about half of the armament, till the moment when the separatist authorities were against this process. About 1,500 active Russian soldiers were in Transnistria of Russian Federation at the moment Ivanov was making this statement. At a recent meeting in Chisinau with the president Vladimir Voronin, Paula De Sutter, assistant of the US State Secretary on armament control, mentioned, „the treaty on conventional guns in Europe cannot be ratified as long as the Russian Federation does not withdraw its equipment and military troops out of Moldova’s territory. According to the American diplomat, USA cannot sign this treaty if Russia „does not comply with one of the basic principles of this document, namely keeping foreign military troops on the national territory without the agreement of the host-state”. In reply, the authorities of Tiraspol announced that they would participate at negotiations 5+2 only after the region’s exports were to be legalized without Chisinau agreement. The last week, in Moscow, a document regarding direct cooperation document between Transnistria and Russia was concluded, allowing Tiraspol to export goods without the clearance of Moldovan customs services.