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Pridnestrovie plans its own foreign intelligence service
Pridnestrovie's Parliament has scheduled discussion on a new foreign intelligence bill. If approved, the law will create a new intelligence agency called the PMR Service of Foreign Intelligence. Among the goals listed in the bill, this agency will provide security for embassies which Pridnestrovie plans to open abroad in the future.
Spymaster? PMR Parliamentary Speaker Yevgeny Shevchuk, 39, thinks his country needs a special agency to deal with foreign intelTIRASPOL (Tiraspol Times) - At a session of the Presidium of Pridnestrovie's Parliament held on Tuesday, lawmakers today discussed and included in the agenda of the next plenary session a Bill On Foreign Intelligence of the Pridnestrovskaia Moldavskaia Respublica (PMR, but also known under informal names such as Transnistria, Trans-Dniester and Transdniestria).
The initiative defines the necessity of creating the PMR Service of Foreign Intelligence as a specific body (division), "called to protect the safety and integrity of human beings, society and the state from foreign threats by the use of lawfully established methods and means." Its work will be subject to parliamentary oversight and will be defined through legislative regulation.
The author of the bill is Yevgeny Shevchuk, the 39 year old Speaker of the unrecognized country's Parliament. In calling for the Bill to be debated and passed, Shevchuk stated that "Pridnestrovie has been increasing its activities on the international scene. In response, this has led to increased activity of foreign intelligence agencies within Pridnestrovie's territory. He did not specify which foreign agencies, if any, are active in Pridnestrovie but a source informed that both the Moldovan and the Romanian secret services are actively working to undermine their smaller neighbor's claim to statehood.
At the current time, Pridnestrovie already has branches of government agencies who handle the functions of foreign intelligence gathering and counterintelligence. According to Shevchuk, the bulk of this work is currently carried out within the Ministry of State Security (MGB, by its Russian initials) and the Ministry of Defense.
- Protection of embassies abroad
The new bill allows for a separate body to be established to deal exclusively with the threat to Pridnestrovie's statehood that foreign intelligence can represent. Such an agency, the PMR Service of Foreign Intelligence, will function separately from the country's existing law enforcement agencies. According to the proposal, it will provide the President, Parliament and specific governmental agencies with "the intelligence information necessary for duly acceptance of decisions in political, economic, strategic, scientific and technical and ecological areas."
The legislative proposal also plans to include the protection of state secrets in foreign missions, such as embassies and trade offices, which the Republic of Pridnestrovie will be opening in other countries in the future, as well as providing for the physical safety of PMR citizens sent abroad to work in these missions.
Deputies from the country's legislature will vote on the bill in its second reading, which will either take place in a plenary sessions later in February or in early March.
Pridnestrovie declared independence in 1990, one year before Moldova. It has never been a historical part of Moldova, and has a different ethnic and linguistic composition than its larger neighbor. Moldova maintains a territorial dispute over the state, but has never exercised any sovereignty over the area at any time in its history as an independent country.
See also:
» Ex-agent: Romania's spies launder money in Moldova; misinform about PMR
» PMR adheres to Hague Convention against aircraft hijackings
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The government of Pridnestrovie has proposed a solution on Permanent Status Negotiations that will be based on consensus with Moldova. Its government sees little or no point in signing an unequal treaty which mostly favors just one of the sides, its Foreign Ministry said. The dispute over Pridnestrovie's territory has lasted almost 18 years. . . 
