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Moldova needs new approach to Dniester settlement — Moldovan prime minister

CHISINAU, August 20 /TASS/. Moldova needs a new strategy to settle the Dniester conflict, Moldova’s new Prime Minister Valery Strelets told journalists on Thursday.

"We should develop a new vision and attitude to settling the Dniester problem; work out a concrete action plan and start implementing it step by step," the prime minister said adding the changing regional situation was prompting the government in Chisinau to act this way.

"We believe that this conflict deters our European integration," Strelets said after a meeting of the government commission for the country’s reintegration that gathered after a two-year interval.

Strelets said the Dniester settlement would become his cabinet’s new priority. Strelets said that all state-run institutions should assess their capabilities in this sphere and prepare proposals and suggestions for the next meeting.

The government re-integration commission was created in 2011. It comprises 29 officials, including vice-premiers, ministers and strongmen. The reintegration bureau headed by Vice-Premier Viktor Osipov also deals with the Dniester settlement in the Moldovan government.

The "5+2" negotiations for the Dniester settlement [Moldova, the Dniester Republic, Russia, Ukraine and the OSCE as well as observers from the United States and the European Union] came to a halt in September 2014 after the government in Tiraspol, the capital of the Dniester Republic, had accused Moldova of exerting pressure.

Nina Shtanski, the vice-premier and foreign minister of the unrecognized Dniester Republic, has called on Moldova to give up reciprocal prosecution of politicians. The government in Tiraspol also stressed the need to lift Moldova’s trade restrictions imposed on the Dniester Republic jointly with Ukraine. All that impaired the economic situation in the region. The government had to introduce austerity measures and cut salaries and pensions by 30%.