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Lithuania's President Valdas Adamkus says that "the lives and dreams" of those who live in unrecognized countries are frozen

NEW YORK (Tiraspol Times) - In his address to the annual high-level debate of the United Nations General Assembly, the President of Lithuania, Valdas Adamkus, highlighted the plight of the people of Transdniestria and other "frozen conflict" areas in what was formerly the Soviet Union.

He pointed out that some conflicts in the world are not visible, and specifically referred to the situation of the four unrecognized states which are known as "frozen conflicts"; Transdniestria, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Nagorno Karabakh. Each one of these de facto independent countries fought wars for independence in the early 1990s and each one is subject to unresolved territorial claims by neighboring Moldova, Georgia and Azerbaijan in turn.

" - ‘Frozen conflicts’ in Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus may become ‘very hot’ unless we act immediately," warned Adamkus in what many at the UN took as a veiled reference to attempts by Georgia to destabilize the situation in both Abkhazia and South Ossetia over the past week.

On September 20, Georgia attacked an Abkhazian training school for border guards. The incident ended with fatalities: No Georgians died, but on the Abkhazian side two people were killed. In addition to the two dead, Georgia also captured seven prisoners and are now holding them as hostages in Georgia. Three days earlier, Georgia had planned a march on South Ossetia, and anti-independence leaflets were dropped in anticipation of a protest which didn't materialize as planned.
Meanwhile, a build-up of the Georgian armed forces from 60,000 to 90,000 servicemen (including reservists) is well underway and will be completed by the end of the year.

Frozen lives, frozen dreams

It is in the face of a build-up to a new war over the unrecognized countries that the President of Lithuania, Valdas Adamkus, warned the member countries of the United Nations and urged them to respect the human rights of the people who are involved.

" - Let us not forget that it is not only the conflicts that are frozen, but also the lives and dreams of the people living in those areas of artificial conflict," he said. Neither Moldova nor Georgia have yet had the validity of their territorial claims tested by an international court of law, and in the meantime the people of Transdniestria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia are trapped artificially in a legal limbo.

" - This is where the United Nations should be more visible and more outspoken," said Adamkus.

More than a million people live in the four unrecognized countries in the post-Soviet space. President Adamkus warns against a build-up to war which can shatter the lives of these people, including the population of the largest of the four states; Transdniestria with 550,000 inhabitants. The overwhelming majority of them have dreams of independent statehood and closer ties with Russia, according to an independence referendum which was held on 17 September 2006 in the presence of 130 international election observers.

Today Transdniestria is officially named the Pridnestrovskaia Moldavskaia Respublica, or Pridnestrovie for short. It declared independence in 1990 and currently meets the requirements for separate statehood under international law.

Part of Lithuania, but never of Moldova

When Adamkus speaks of the conflict in Transdniestria, he is referring to old Lithuanian land. Transdniestria was part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from the 14th to the 16th centuries. At its largest, at the end of the 15th century, the greater Lithuania reached the Black Sea and the border was the Dniester river. The Dniester river is also today's border between Moldova and Transdniestria.

Moldova, on the other side of the Dniester river, was never part of Lithuania at any time in history. Transdniestria has at various times belonged to Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Russia. It is traditionally not Moldovan land, and it has never at any time in history been part of any independent Moldova or Romania.

Transdniestria's only connection to Moldova was the forced merger between Transdniestria and Moldova in 1940 when Stalin forced Moldova to join the Soviet Union, of which Transdniestria was already a part. Moldova later renounced this act as illegal. When Moldova left the Soviet Union, it attempted to take Transdniestria along with it, despite the fact that Moldova itself had originally declared "null and void" the Pact which for the first time in history brought the two sides together inside the Soviet Union.

See also:
» United Nations petitioned by Pridnestrovie, two other unrecognized countries [1]
» PMR Foreign Minister defends United Nations appeal against Moldova [2]
» European delegates want human rights for PMR's 555,000 people [3]