VIENNA, June 06. /ITAR-TASS/. Transdniestria’s top diplomat has said the signing of the Association Agreement between Moldova and the EU will have a negative impact on the republic’s economy.

“We expect the signing of the agreement to affect our relationship because it does not take into account the unsettled problem,” the foreign minister of Moldova’s breakaway republic of Transdniestria, Nina Shtanski, told a news conference after the 5+2 talks on Friday.

“The Association Agreement will also influence Transdniestria’s economic development. I hope that the participants in the talks will do their best to avoid undesirable effects on our economy,” she said.

“The lack of dialogue prevents us from finding a mechanism (for discussing the issue),” Shtanski said.

Moldovan Vice-Premier for Reintegration Yevgeny Karpov said, “Moldova will sign the Association Agreement in the near future.”

“In our view, the agreement will have no negative impact,” he said.

In the meantime, the OSCE spokesman, Radojko Bogojevic of Serbia said the regular round of talks within the 5+2 format (Moldova, Transdniestria, Russia, Ukraine, the OSCE and observers from the EU and the US) may take place in Vienna on July 17-18.

However, Shtanski said, “This statement is only a half measure because as minimum two delegations said we’ll be able to prepare.”

“There are certain problems and we agreed to solve them and coordinate the date of the talks till June 20,” she said, adding that the dialogue on Transdniestria settlement would be continued at the OSCE conference in Munich next week.

 

The history of the Transdniestrian conflict 

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.

Russian peacekeepers were deployed in the region in July 1992 after the presidents of Moldova and Russia had signed in Moscow an agreement on the peaceful settlement of the Transdniestrian conflict, thus putting an end to the fratricidal war that had claimed over a thousand lives and left tens of thousands wounded and refugees.

The limited group of Russian troops (LGRT) and Russian peacekeepers are staying in the Transdniestrian Moldovan Republic in accordance with the Agreement on the Principles of Peaceful Settlement of the Moldovan-Transdniestrian Conflict that was signed in 1992 by the heads of Russia and the Republic of Moldova in the presence of the president of Transdniestria. The joint statement of the presidents of Moldova, Transdniestria and Russia signed on March 18, 2009 noted the stabilising role of the Russian peacekeeping mission in the region and the advisability for its transformation into a peace-safeguarding operation under the auspices of the OSCE only after the Transdniestrian settlement. The LGRT guards the remains of arms depots that were built during the Second World War and that began to be moved out in 2000. This process was later stopped by the Transdniestrian authorities following a deep stalemate in the Moldovan-Transdniestrian conflict.

Since then, they have been guarding peace in the region together with their Moldovans and Transdniestrian colleagues. No armed clashes or deaths of peaceful citizen have been reported in the region during this period.

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 previous round of the 5+2 talks was held in Brussels in October of 2013. The next round of the 5+2 talks on the Transdniestrian settlement process will take place in Vienna on February 27 and 28.