CHISINAU, February 14. /TASS/. Moldova’s authorities intend to achieve a settlement of the Transnistrian issue and the withdrawal of Russian troops "exclusively by peaceful means," the country’s acting Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Nicu Popescu said on Tuesday.
"I confirmed the Republic of Moldova’s firm adherence to the process of our country’s peaceful unification via dialogue and talks. <...> I confirmed that the main goal of our foreign policy is the withdrawal of Russia’s military formations as well as weapons illegally located on our soil. On this issue, we also adhere to exclusively peaceful methods," he said at a joint briefing with his North Macedonian counterpart Bujar Osmani who arrived in Moldova as the OSCE’s Chairman-in-Office.
The Moldovan top diplomat said that currently Chisinau is trying to maintain bilateral dialogue with Tiraspol because the "5+2" negotiating format (Moldova, Transnistria, the OSCE, Russia, Ukraine and observers from the US and the EU) is not working.
Russian peacekeepers were deployed to the Transnistrian conflict zone under the July 21, 1992 agreement with Moldova on the principles of peaceful settlement of an armed conflict in Transnistria. There is also the Operational Group of Russian Forces in the region numbering about 1,000 soldiers and officers guarding warehouses storing more than 20,000 tons of munitions brought there after Soviet troops withdrew from European countries.
Chisinau insists both on withdrawing the Russian operational group and on replacing the peacekeepers with a civilian mission under an international mandate. However, Tiraspol reiterates that in 1992, such a mission could not have prevented the armed conflict which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,000 people and tens of thousands wounded or displaced.