The official Transnistrian conflict settlements talks in the 5+2 format will be resumed this year. The commitment was made at the last informal meeting held in Vienna on March 1 and 2. “We agreed to switch from informal meetings to official consultations in this format as no such meetings have been held since 2006,” Deputy Prime Minister for reintegration matters Victor Osipov said in a briefing on March 4, quoted by Info-Prim Neo. According to him, the participants in the meeting agreed to hold talks in the 5+2 format periodically, at least once in three months. “This year, we will have at least four such meetings. The meeting in Vienna will be followed by another one in Astana at end-May and two more in July and October. But the arrangements are not final and can be modified depending on the needs and agenda,” the Deputy Prime Minister said. Another agreement reached in Vienna is that the agenda of the meetings will contain at least one problem that the population expects to be solved. The parties involved in the talks pledged not to get into an argument when they discuss the agenda of the meetings. "Chisinau and Tiraspol will be able to propose by a topic for discussion and will not argue with each other over this,” Victor Osipov explained. The informal meeting in the 5+2 format in Vienna is the first held after Kazakhstan took over the presidency of the OSCE. Kazakhstan could stimulate the settlement process as it has great economic and political potential, negotiating capacity and favorable conditions for discussions, including with Russia, which is one of the major players in the negotiations, Victor Osipov said. The representative for conflicts under the Kazakh presidency Bolat Nurgaliev welcomed the resumption of the bilateral dialogue between the political representatives of the official Chisinau and Tiraspol last yearend and of the confidence-building working groups. Victor Osipov said most of the working groups resumed work. The group responsible for economic matters will also meet soon. For agenda-related reasons, it could not arrange yet a meeting. The Deputy Prime Minister also said that after the first round of meetings, an analysis will be made to see how their work can be improved. Asked about the Moldovan Government's plans concerning Transnistria in the context of the early legislative elections, Victor Osipov said it is very important to solve a number of acute problems during the next 6-7 months that will not be yet affected by electoral problems. He also refereed to the Transnistrian schools working under the Moldovan Education Ministry's program, to which children from other settlements go to study Romanian. Asked to comment on last Saturday's accident when Transnistrian border guards in Dubasari did not allow the president of the Academy of Sciences of Moldova to enter the region, Victor Osipov said that was an illegal, abusive and unacceptable act. In Vienna, the participants in the 5+2 format meeting decided to discourage such acts and not allow that they hinder the negotiation process, Osipov said. According to the information provided by the Deputy Prime Minister, more than 140 documents had been signed during the negotiation process from 1992 until March 2005. Twenty-six of them are political in character, 62 are economic, while 54 are sectoral documents. Many of these documents are outdated and both Chisinau and Tiraspol highlighted the necessity of reviewing them, Victor Osipov said.