CHISINAU, February 26. /ITAR-TASS/. Crisis in Ukraine is not threatening the national security of Moldova, the country’s President, Nicholae Timofti said Wednesday in a comment on a meeting of the National Security Council that was held Tuesday.

“The situation is stable on the whole and there are no risks or threats to Moldova’s national security at the moment,” Timofti said.

He indicated that, apart from the situation in Ukraine, members of the Council also discussed the situation in the country’s breakaway Transdnistria region, also known as the unrecognized Dniester Republic and also in the Gagauz autonomous region, the residents of which voted for joining the Customs Union of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia in a recent referendum.

“Moldova’s authorities believe the plebiscite was illegal,” Timofti said. “I know a threat of similar referendums exist in other parts of the country, too, but it’s important to explain to the people moves of this kind to destabilize the situation in the country, since the /central/ government is getting ready to sign an Association Agreement with the EU.”

When a reporter asked him to comment on a statement by the Chairman-in-Office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe /OSCE/, Swiss Foreign Minister Didier Burkhalter, who did not rule out a possibility of a deterioration of the situation in the Dniester Republic, Timofti said Burkhalter’s apprehensions were too exaggerated.

“No doubt, there are forces in the country that would be interested in making the situation here careen but on the whole it is stable,” he said.