CHISINAU, May 21./ITAR-TASS/. Moldova will pay attention to citizens’ movement problems at the upcoming talks on Transdniestria (Moldova’s breakaway republic) settlement due to open in Vienna on June 5-6, Moldova’s senior government official has said.

“We voice concern over problems that Moldovan farmers were faced with when they cultivate the land on the border territories. We will also raise problems related to the functioning of the Romanian-language schools in Transdniestria,” Moldovan Vice-Premier Yevgeny Karpov told a joint news conference with OSCE Ambassador Radojko Bogojevic on Wednesday.

He represents Moldova at the 5+2 talks (Moldova, Transdniestria, Russia, Ukraine, the OSCE and observers from the EU and the US).

On Tuesday, May 20, the European diplomat visited Transdniestria.

The meetings were held in a business-like and friendly atmosphere, Bogojevic said.

The Transdniestrian settlement talks in 5+2 format were broken up at the end of February 2006. Chisinau and Tiraspol managed to resume the dialogue with Russia’s assistance two years later at the level of political representatives. They gathered every month to resolve pressing problems of the population of Moldova and the breakaway republic. In March 2009, the negotiations were resumed again after the trilateral meeting of the presidents of Russia, Moldova and Transdniestria. At their meetings in Moscow and Vilnius late last year and in Dublin this year, the parties agreed to resume the talks.

The agenda of the 5+2 talks consists of three sets of issues: socioeconomic problems, humanitarian issues and human rights, and comprehensive settlement, including institutional, political and security issues.

The Transdniestrian conflict started in March 1992 when the first clashes occurred between Moldovan police and Transdniestrian police 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.