Described as "lethargic," PMR foreign policy comes under scrutiny

Anybody home? The PMR Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the capital city of Tiraspol

MOSCOW (Special to Tiraspol Times) - Being an unrecognized country sometimes means navigating in rough international water, and even on the river Dniester it is possible that a storm may soon break out. To successfully direct the "ship of state", several factors are needed - including a skilled captain, good sails, a sense of direction, and bright lighthouses.

The strong hand on the steering wheel is evidently the President himself. The sails are at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the lighthouses - to the extent that they exist - are supposed to be a string of diplomatic offices abroad who can provide the government with feedback on how the prospects for international relations are developing, along with suggestions on what needs to be done next.

In today's Pridnestrovie, the captain of the ship of state already has the backing of the most important part of his vessel – the people. Independence, whether recognized or not, is without a doubt the preferred choice of the overwhelming majority of the population on the left bank of the Dniester. The President has a compass in the form of September 2006's independence referendum which defined the future direction of Pridnestrovie’s development.

PMR's Foreign Minister Valeri Litskai is the key man in charge of a policy which is being described as "autistic" and "lethargic."

What Pridnestrovie lacks, however, is wind in the sails - for the simple reason that the sails of this vessel have long ago rotted away completely, and no longer exist in any practical way. Even worse, the lighthouses, which were supposed to have been established in a number of foreign countries by now, are either not there or have never had their lights turned on.

Invisible missions

These lighthouses - Pridnestrovie's foreign missions and representative offices abroad - are merely voracious missions-phantoms. Five years ago, Foreign Minister Valeri Litskai announced that the first two of them had been opened, and that representative offices in Moscow (Russia) and Kiev (Ukraine) were now working. And for five years, Litskai's representative offices have been swallowing up more than 1.5 millions of Euros of state funding.

But where are they? And what are their results so far? The first two of a series of planned representative offices have for the past five years operated in complete silence without any known addresses, phone numbers or staff. The results of their work, are - just like their whereabouts - also unknown. And the people which they are supposed to deal with are also unaware of their existence: As absurd as this sounds, government officials in Kiev and Moscow do not know anything about Pridnestrovie's representative offices in these cities, despite the fact that some of them openly sympathize with the plight of the people of Pridnestrovie and want to help.

Contacting the PMR Ministry of Foreign Affairs does not shed any further light on the issue. A link on the Ministry's website with the helpful text "Representative offices" takes you to ... a blank page! The secret of whether these offices even exist at all is the best kept secret of PMR's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

After numerous efforts aimed at finding out the fate of the representative offices, no additional light was shed on the situation. Several requests for clarification which were addressed to both the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Pridnestrovie and to Valeri Litskai himself have gone unanswered.

But what is Valeri Litskai hiding? Shady financial deals, personal incompetence, or merely an inability to delegate?

Lack of progress in normalizing relations

Results are also lacking in other areas, not least in the long-stalled status settlement talks where the goal is to normalize relations with Moldova. Here, the leading negotiator is Valeri Litskai. But it appears that he has long ago forgotten what negotiations are actually about, and is now using his persuasive skills to solely present a distorted picture of the current reality to Pridnestrovie's President, its Parliamentary Deputies and the local media.

What Litskai cares less about, based on his record and achievements so far, is the implementation of Pridnestrovie's foreign policy goals. Until now, Pridnestrovie lacks behind every other unrecognized country in the world - with the sole exception of South Ossetia - in the number of international representations, consulates abroad and other diplomatic missions. Pridnestrovie is also conspicuously absent in international organizations, even including the ones that have no qualms about admitting unrecognized states. Pridnestrovie never applied for membership in the UNPO, the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (with Abkhazia and Taiwan as members, and which counts now-independent Georgia and Estonia among its former members) or the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (where TRNC, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, participates with full observer status).

Concerns over information efforts

Also lacking is improvement in the present image of the country which Litskai represents as its top diplomat. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is directly in charge of Pridnestrovie's informational efforts in both Russia and Europe, but has not undertaken a single visible information campaign for years. Nor has it funded any outside efforts by others, or hired any serious external experts in the field. Insiders now say that funds for information efforts in English and other languages are instead finding their way to a personal bank account which Valeri Litskai controls in Spain.

Things may be looking up for Pridnestrovie, however. During the first week of April, members of Parliament will be evaluating Valeri Litskai’s work. Whereas Litskai is expected to assure the MPs that everything is fine and under control, it is clear that PMR's Foreign Policy Objectives have not yet been achieved, some three years after they were defined by Parliament in 2005. These goals include a stronger diplomatic presence abroad as well as international recognition, even if only partial like that of Kosovo or Taiwan.

Barry Lewinson once explained why a dog wags its tail: “It is because a dog is smarter than its tail. If the tail was smarter, the tail would wag the dog”. In Tiraspol, regardless of who wags who, it is now time to lift the PMR Foreign Ministry out of its current state of lethargy and autism.

Also by Simon Lewinsky:
» New face set to replace Transnistria's Foreign Minister
» Bumps in the road for Pridnestrovie's foreign policy