Transnistrian Conflict on August 30 – September 12, 2004

Despite statements made earlier by the break away leader Igor Smirnov that all the schools from the Transnistrian region will start the new academic year under normal conditions, two of the eight Moldovan Latin script school — the lyceum “Evrica” from Ribnita and the school no. 20 from Tiraspol, where about 1200 children are taught, continue to be sealed, and the orphanage in Tighina (Bender) is still disconnected from the water supply.

This has determined the Moldovan authorities to call upon the international community and the mediators in the Transnistrian conflict resolution to step up efforts to influence the Transnistrian authorities to solve the schools issue, whereas the OSCE Mission in Moldova called once more upon the two parties to resume negotiations in the five-sided format and said that the schools issue that has served as a trigger in stalling the negotiations process is far from being settled.

Meanwhile, the Tiraspol authorities celebrated on 3 September the 14th anniversary of the “independence” of the self-proclaimed “moldovan transnistrian republic” and organised a military parade to assert once more their self-sufficiency and show its honourable guests from Russia, Ukraine, South Ossetia and Abkhasia, as Smirnov himself put it, that at present Transnistria is able to resist any military aggression with its own means.

A few days later, the forces with special destination and the Transnistrian militia engaged in another demonstration of force, this time in a real life situation, and took by siege the railway station and the railway depots in Tighina (Bender), whereby they aggressed physically several employees of the Moldovan railways and arrested the chief engineer of the Tighina (Bender) station and a journalist from the Moldova 1 TV Channel. The sentence of the two arrested to 15 days of detention was condemned by the Moldovan authorities, and the Moldovan General Prosecutor’s office opened a criminal investigation in the case of the siege of the railway station and depots in Tighina (Bender) and the arrest of the Moldovan journalist.

The tensioned situation in the Transnistrian region was discussed on 9 September within the meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna, which, according to a communique by the Moldovan Foreign Affairs Ministry, “vehemently condemned the actions of destabilisation” by the Transnistrian administration and called for the unconditioned reopening of the schools in Tiraspol and Ribnita, the resumption of the normal activity of the railways in the eastern areas of Moldova and the stabilisation of the situation in the security zone.

Also on 9 September Petar Stoyanov, special envoy of the Bulgarian Chairmanship of the OSCE, arrived in Chisinau for a two-day visit. The visit is part of the OSCE efforts to encourage negotiations on the Transnistrian problem and included meetings with the Moldovan President Voronin, Ministry of Reintegration Sova, other Moldovan officials and members of the Transnistrian administration. At the end of the visit, Stoyanov said he was deeply concerned about the continuing deterioration of relations between Chisinau and Tiraspol and called upon the two parties to overcome their divergences at the negotiations table.

The repeated calls by the OSCE and other European organisations to resume negotiations seem though to reach only Tiraspol, where recently the breakaway leader Igor Smirnov has declared that he is ready to carry talks with Chisinau within the five-sided format, because “there is no other perspective to settle the Moldovan-Transnistrian conflict than dialogue”. On the other hand, the official Chisinau preserves its intransigent position as expressed by President Voronin on 27 August and according to which the Moldovan officials will no longer talk to the Transnistrian leaders, but “just with those who Tiraspol obeys to in the most direct way.” In Chisinau’s view, thus, there is no other way of overcoming the current critical situation but through the “concerted and sustained” efforts of the international community, including the organisation of an international conference on Moldova and the signature of the Pact of Stability and Security for Moldova as proposed by President Voronin to the mediator states, the US, EU and Romania.

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Transnistrian Conflict on August 30 – September 12, 2004

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