Translated material
Dangerous meeting
The Transnistrian leader refused to go to Moldova
The meeting of the Moldovan and Transnistrian presidents Vladimir Voronin and Igor Smirnov scheduled for today will not take place. The head of the information support department for foreign policy activities of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the unrecognized Transnistria, Svetlana Antonova, told Vremya Novostei the day before. Tiraspol blamed Chisinau for disrupting the meeting.For the first time after a seven-year break, the two leaders met on April 11 of this year , but at that time, perhaps the only achievement was the very fact of communication between Messrs. Voronin and Smirnov. After the August crisis in the Caucasus, speculation appeared in the media that Moscow wants to strengthen its peacekeeping image in the eyes of the West by actively promoting the settlement of the Transnistrian conflict . It was expected that some kind of solemn joint declaration would be signed in Moscow by the Moldovan and Transnistrian leaders with the participation of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. The key points of such a document, according to forecasts, were what Voronin and Smirnov planned to discuss today.
The Minister of Reintegration of Moldova, Vasily Shova, told reporters the day before that consultations between the parties’ experts on preparing for their meeting were underway. However, he did not specify the date and place of the meeting. As Svetlana Antonova explained to Vremya Novostey, at the request of Chisinau, the dates were repeatedly postponed, and as a result, a preliminary agreement was reached to hold the meeting on September 25.
However, the meeting place could not be agreed upon. Tiraspol proposed not to change it and to organize a reception on the territory under its control in Bendery, where the two leaders communicated this spring. Chisinau put forward various options: from Voronin’s residence in Golercani to the Moldovan city of New Aneni, located not far from Bendery. To this, the Transnistrian Foreign Ministry stated that the Moldovan side “left open the question of providing security and immunity guarantees to the highest officials of Transnistria.” This “does not correspond to the pre-agreed parameters of the meeting,” since Chisinau has not abandoned the criminal prosecution of the Transnistrian leaders, and the Moldovan special services “have been striving for a long time to implement the tasks assigned to them to neutralize them” and apply “preventive measures” to them.
The head of the European Institute of Moldova, Victor Dorosh, noted to Vremya Novostey that the parties did not seem to be seriously preparing for the meeting of the presidents: “And what could they discuss today in the context of the “cold war” actually continuing on the Dniester and the opposing approaches of the parties to resolving the conflict ? Our interlocutor believes that we can hardly expect progress in the Transnistrian settlement before the parliamentary elections in Moldova in March next year. However, the Pridnestrovian Foreign Ministry does not rule out the possibility of continuing consultations with Chisinau on preparing for a summit meeting and expresses readiness for an “equal constructive dialogue.”