Pridnestrovie turns down Moldovan proposal as PR move

Pridnestrovie's Foreign Minister Valeri Litskai sees Chisinau's latest gimmick as a cheap PR stunt with no seriousness behind it

TIRASPOL (Tiraspol Times) - The government of Pridnestrovie has decided to turn down the Moldovan president’s idea of setting up a working group for the implementation of confidence-building measures, Pridnestrovie's foreign minister told reporters.

" - (President Vladimir) Voronin’s offers are a PR move launched ahead of a CIS summit and consultations of mediators on the Pridnestrovie settlement in Vienna," Valery Litskai said. "If he indeed wanted to implement all of that, he would have voiced these proposals at the beginning of the year," he was reported by Itar-Tass as saying.

" - That is why we don’t intend to set up such working groups, since we consider these ideas inappropriate and unrealistic at the present stage," Litskai added.

Earlier this week, Vladimir Voronin voiced his apparent desire to set up a joint working group between the two sides to implement a series of proposals that the Moldovan strongman had personally thought up. The proposals - just like the idea of a working group - were never discussed with the government of Pridnestrovie, and Voronin did not take the time to inform Pridnestrovie about them either. Instead, he unveiled them in press interviews and the neighboring government found out about them from reading the newspapers.

Among the proposals suggested by the Moldovan leader is the abolishment of Pridnestrovie's army, to be substituted with the creation of a joint military under Moldovan command.

In addition, Voronin also said that he thought that it was time to remove the travel restrictions on top Pridnestrovie government officials. Since 2003, President Igor Smirnov and almost twenty other pro-independence officials from Pridnestrovie have been barred from entering the USA and European Union countries after having been placed on a travel ban blacklist as a political pressure tactic.

Travel bans to be lifted

After four years, the travel bans failed to quell the strong independence desire of Pridnestrovie and it is now clear that strong-arm tactics such as visa bans and travel restrictions are not working. In consequence, Voronin offered to lift restrictions on the travel of PMR government officials and at the same time also begin joint development and implementation of projects on the restoration and updating of infrastructure, first of all in the transport sector.

Talks over Pridnestrovie's independence have been carried out within the format of “five plus two” (Moldova, Pridnestrovie, Russia, Ukraine, the OSCE – mediators, and the USA and the European Union – as nonvoting observers) have been stalled since February 2006, when Moldova decided to abruptly leave the talks. Later that same week, Ukraine at the request of the Moldovan leadership introduced a new customs regime against Pridnestrovie's exporters.

Tiraspol qualified it as economic blockade - a term also used by American intelligence analysts Stratfor - and conditioned the resumption of talks on an understanding that the use of such pressure-tactics should not be used to force a specific outcome to the talks.
Earlier, in 1997, Moldova had signed the so called "Primakov Memorandum" with Pridnestrovie which ruled out the use of any sort of pressure tactics. The same memorandum also gave Pridnestrovie the right to free foreign trade, and moreover guaranteed that Pridnestrovie would be consulted by Moldova regarding any foreign policy decisions that affected Pridnestrovie.

By urging Ukraine to clamp down on customs rules against Pridnestrovie, Moldova broke all three promises of the 1997 agreement between the two sides: First, it resorted to illegal pressure tactics. Secondly, it restricted Pridnestrovie's right to free foreign trade. And thirdly, the blockade - a foreign policy decision, since it involved Ukraine - was secretly planned against Pridnestrovie without any prior involvement or consultations that Pridnestrovie were allowed to participate in. This, too, is in breach of the 1997 agreement, says Tiraspol. (With information from Itar-Tass)

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