CHISINAU, July 2. /TASS/. Moldova has turned down a declaration on the peaceful settlement of relations that was offered by the unrecognized republic of Transnistria, Transnistria leader Vadim Krasnoselsky said.
"It’s hard to understand why Moldova rejected the proposal to sign a peace document. Everyone talks about peace and avoiding aggression, including the Moldovan side. Well, let us sign this document then, let us commit this intention to paper," his press service quoted him as saying at a meeting with the head of the EU delegation to Moldova Janis Mazeikis.
Considering that talks in the 5+2 format (Moldova, Transnistria, the OSCE, Russia, Ukraine and observers from the United States and the European Union) are frozen, "one cannot use this as an excuse not to come to terms," he said.
"A question arises: why? What don’t they like about this declaration? It is quite clear and transparent - it calls for peace, mutual respect, the implementation of the existing agreements. It calls on all participants in the negotiating process to join this declaration," Krasnoselsky noted.
Transnistria, a largely Russian-speaking region on the left bank of the Dniester River, broke away from Moldova in September 1990 when radical Moldovan politicians demanded that the republic withdraw from the former Soviet Union and unify with Romania. Its relations with Moldova’s central government in Chisinau have been highly mixed and extremely tense at times ever since then. In 1992, after Chisinau tried to resolve the problem with the use of force, tensions erupted into a bloody armed conflict that claimed the lives of hundreds of people on both sides.
The fratricidal war was stopped after a ceasefire was signed in 1992 and Russian peacekeepers were brought into the conflict area. Negotiations on the conflict’s peace settlement known as the 5+2 format (Moldova, Transnistria, the OSCE, Russia, Ukraine and observers from the United States and the European Union) started after that.
The latest official meeting in the 5+2 format was held in Bratislava in 2019 and the latest meeting of the sides’ political envoys was held in January 2024. The OSCE mission to Moldova admitted earlier that the pause in the negotiating process has triggered an escalation of tension between the two Dniester banks.
During a meeting with Moldova’s Deputy Prime Minister for Reintegration Oleg Serebrian on May 17, Transnistrian Foreign Minister Vitaly Ignatyev suggested that the sides sign a peace document. On Monday, Ignatyev said that Chisinau had made changes to the document that Transnistria found to be unacceptable.