Transnistria’s participation in the five-plus-two negotiations is like proceedings where the prosecutor and the judge negotiate with the accused person what jail term to give him to spend in prison for his crime, Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin stated to the national television on Saturday, March 11. This statement comes after the Tiraspol authorities have recently announced that they withdraw from the negotiation process as response to the new customs regime introduced at the Moldovan-Ukrainian border for commodities from the Transnistrian enclave. Voronin considers that the Transnistrian settlement negotiations with the participation of separatist leaders are inefficient. „They seized the power and that is why we must not negotiate with them, but we should prepare democratid negotiations in order to negotiate with civil society representatives, new democratic authorities, not with those who have usurped the power and shot Moldovans during the armed conflict,” the president noted. Also, Mr. Voronin excluded a possible new armed conflict in Transnistria. „Many persons say that Moldova is getting ready to settle the conflict on a military way, but this is foolishness and an ill imagination. We have demonstrated in the past five years that all the problems are solved on a political way,” the chief of state underlined. Speaking about Moldova’s relations with the Russian Federation, the president said that this country remains one of key strategic and economic partners of Moldova, while the only divergence between Chisinau and Moscow is related to the conflict on the left bank of the Dniester river. It is for the second time when the Moldovan president says publicly that he will not negotiate with the administration of Igor Smirnov because negotiations with the Tiraspol regime are useless. Earlier, Vladimir Voronin has proposed Transnistrian settlement negotiations „only with the sides that do hold the power in the separatist region.”