Vasile Tarlev pledges not to sue press

Vasile Tarlev wants to have friendly relations with the press and says that as long as he is Prime Minister, he will not sue the press for the information concerning him which he considers incorrect. “I made it clear that as long as I hold this post, I will not appeal to the court in order to discuss with the press,” the head of the Government said. According to Tarlev, since he is Prime Minister there were situations when people of good faith provided him with juridical arguments that he could use to defend his rights in court. The Premier says that sooner or later everyone will have to answer for their deeds in a higher court, the divine one. “I know my duties and I try to be correct. I do not appeal to the court, but this does not mean that I neglect the press. On the contrary, I want to be cooperative. I take account of the observations of the press and I try to eliminate my weaknesses. But only those that do nothing do not make mistakes,” the Premier said. In another connection, Vasile Tarlev said that he knows “a lot” about mass media’s sources of financing in Moldova. He said that as from January 1, 2007 all the papers in Moldova are independent and that the Government finances none of them. As regards the payment of several hundreds of thousand lei by the Government for the typographic services of the papers Moldova Suverana (Sovereign Moldova) and Nezavisimaia Moldova (Independent Moldova) several months ago, the Premier said that these were the debts of the Government, which founded these institutions before privatization. These debts were revealed by the audit companies. However, the Premier says he sees nothing wrong in the fact that the Government of a country finances a source of information, because “there are many foreign democratic countries where the state sources of information are financed by the government.”