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A multinational force of peacekeepers maintain a ceasefire in the demilitarized buffer zone between Moldova and Pridnestrovie

BENDER (Tiraspol Times) - According to Moldova, the situation in the buffer zone is “uncontrolled and unmanageable.” It wanted that sentence to be included in two reports on the work of the peacekeeping forces, to be made public Thursday. But none of the other countries agreed with this peculiar point of wording, seeing the peacekeeping situation as stable as ever.

On 2 November, the Moldovan representative to the Joint Control Commission, Viktor Mokrinskiy, refused to sign two reports of the Joint Military Command. The reports consequently could not be made public. Mokrinskiy motivated his refusal by the absence in the reports statements of “uncontrolled and unmanageable situation” in the security zone, as reported by the Regnum news agency.

" - But Moldova's claim does not correspond to reality," said the head of Pridnestrovie's delegation to the JCC, Alexander Porozhan. The situation in the conflict zone is stable. "’Uncontrolled’ and ‘unmanageable’ could be the right terms for either war or the appearance in the conflict zone of some additional armed groups or military equipment. Nothing of this kind is present in Pridnestrovie today."

The Joint Control Commission is made up of representatives from four countries. Moldova, Russia and Pridnestrovie supplies troops, while Ukraine participates with military observers. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, OSCE, is also part of the peacekeeping force with observer status. None of the other parties suppported the Moldovan position and no one in the area sees the situation as being neither uncontrolled or unmanageable in the least.

" - If one of the JCC sides refuses to sign a coordinated document, it is deemed sabotage of the JCC work. This is exactly the same kind of sabotage which was orchestrated by the Moldovan delegation when it unilaterally left a JCC session in 2004 without any authority to do so."

According to Alexander Porozhan, "the sabotage is timed to coincide with the coming visit to the region of an OSCE representative delegation, so that Moldova can once again have an invented pretext for accusing the peacekeeping mission of failing."

OSCE-led weapons inspection planned for next week

The Joint Control Commission, in agreement with the government of Pridnestrovie, has scheduled an upcoming visit of an OSCE representative delegation to inspect weapons in the region. The visit is carried out with the permission of the government and aims to shed light on the true situation of weapons facilities in the unrecognized country.

The OSCE delegation is going to visit the region Nov 10-13. The delegation members intend to hold a briefing in the Joint Military Command headquarters and will, among other things, also inspect the Russian-guarded arms dump and defense depot in Kolbasna, northern PMR.

This is not the first visit of an international delegation of inspectors, with the permission and acceptance of Pridnestrovie's authorities. In February of this year, an international team of weapons inspectors [1] visited Pridnestrovie and toured several factories which had been accused by Moldova as producing weapons. The inspection round found no evidence of weapons manufacture or other arms involvement in any of the inspected factories. Nowhere, in any single instance, did the team find any trace of anything that could be indicative of any arms or military equipment manufacture whatsoever.

Consent of the host country

The current peacekeeping force in Pridnestrovie is a multinational force created with the joint consent of both Moldova and Pridnestrovie in an agreement which ended the hostilities that led to a loss of approximately 1,000 lives in 1992.

In 1992 Moldova initiated a military conflict by sending troops to enforce its territorial claim over Pridnestrovie. Fighting ended with the signing of a ceasefire agreement which established a multinational Joint Control Commission (JCC) to ensure safety in the region. The ceasefire was signed by Mircea Snegur, the president of Moldova at the time, and has not been annulled at any time since then. Being a valid international document, it is still in force and enables the multilateral peacekeeping mission to operative with full host-country consent.

The troops in the JCC are provided in roughly equal numbers by Moldova, Pridnestrovie and Russia, with the Russian presence being the smallest of the three. In addition, Ukraine participates with a limited number of soldiers under an observer status.

Since 1992, the peacekeeping operation has been succesful in preventing any flare-up of the armed conflict. Not a single peacekeeper has lost his life in the past 14 years, causing the mission in Pridnestrovie to be highlighted as an example of one of the world's more successful and effective peacemaking operations.

See also:
» Moldova wants int'l peacekeepers to leave [2]
» "Peacekeepers must leave", says Moldova's foreign minister [3]
» UN Security Council member: "All sides must agree to peacekeeping changes" [4]