MOSCOW, February 19. /TASS/. Transdniestria is ready for 5+2 talks but will participate only with consideration of the results of 2006 referendum on independence, the breakaway republic’s supreme council chairman Vadim Krasnoselsky told journalists after the meeting with Russian senators on Friday.
Krasnoselsky reminded that a referendum was held in Transdniestria back in 2006 where most residents spoke in favor of "Transdniestria’s independence followed by joining the Russian Federation." "I personally think that my colleagues will hold talks from the platform of this referendum based on the opinion of Transdniestrian people," he added.
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The chairman noted that complicated political situation in Moldova does not instill optimism about the prospects of future negotiations. "When something is on fire in a neighbor’s flat, and we are standing ready with a fire extinguisher, this does not add prospects but instead upsets in the current situation. We support stability in Moldova in any case because the stable situation there facilitates negotiations," Krasnoselsky noted.
Talks in an expanded format of 5+2 (involving Moldova and Transdniestria as parties to the conflict, OSCE as a mediator, Russia and Ukraine as guarantors and the European Union and the United States as observers) were suspended in 2014. Relations between Chisinau and Tiraspol cooled after Transdniestria’s leader Yevgeny Shevchuk accused Moldova and Ukraine of coordinated pressure on Transdniestria and the policy of economic sanctions.
On February 17 Special Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Cord Meier-Klodt told a press conference in Chisinau that talks in 5+2 format may be resumed already in spring.
The Transdniestrian conflict started in March 1992 when the first clashes occurred between Moldovan police and Transdniestrian militia near the city of Dubossary, which were followed by an outbreak of armed hostilities. By summer, it had developed into large-scale fighting in Bendery, where about a thousand people were killed and tens of thousands were wounded and became refugees.
The fratricidal war was stopped after a peace agreement was signed in Moscow in July of the same year and Russian peacekeepers were brought into the conflict area.
Since then, they have been guarding peace and calm in the region, together with their Moldovan and Transdniestria colleagues, thus allowing Chisinau and Tiraspol to conduct negotiations on the settlement of the conflict around the breakaway republic.