United Moldova Party seeks Defense Ministry's dismissal

The United Moldova Party demands that Minister of Defense Vitalie Marinuta be dismissed. “It looks as if Mister Marinuta lost orientation and cannot realize whether he is Minister of Defense or promoter of the NATO values in Chisinau,” the party's leader Vladimir Turcan said during a news conference on Thursday, Info-Prim Neo reports. The statements come after Vitalie Marinuta gave an interview on the topic to the radio station Romania Actualitati and the agency Agerpres. Vladimir Turcan said they lodged an application with Moldova's Information and Security Service, asking that it investigate Vitalie Marinuta' work in 2005-2006, when he formed part of the U.S. Central Command in Florida. Turcan also said that Marinuta had an irresponsible attitude towards the veterans and accused him of not presenting a plan of action for 2010, when the CIS marks 65 years of the end of the World War Two. The five former Communist MPs who joined the United Moldova Party will demand that Vitalie Marinuta be dismissed at Friday's meeting of the Parliament. Earlier this week, the press office of the Ministry of Defense made public passages from the interview given by Vitalie Marinuta to the Romanian press. He said, among others: “The Constitution says that Moldova is a neutral state and we will respect the law.”