Transnistrian Conflict on July 4–29, 2005

On 22 July, the Moldovan Parliament adopted in two readings the Law on the Basic Provisions on the Special Legal Status of the Transnistrian Region. The draft law was prepared by the Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin and was discussed by an ad-hoc parliamentary panel composed of representatives of all parliamentary factions.

According to the adopted law, the Transnistrian region is proclaimed as a territorial administrative unit within the Republic of Moldova, which will exercise its competences in accordance with the Moldovan Constitution. The Transnistrian autonomy will include those localities that will decide so through referendum. The Transnistrian autonomy will be represented by a local legislative body, the Supreme Council. The first elections to this body will be organised by the OSCE only after the withdrawal of the Russian troops and weapons, the demilitarisation and democratisation of the region.

The Law provides for the adoption of a new Law on the special legal status of Transnistria, which will delimitate the powers between the central public authorities and the Transnistrian ones, and will provide for a system of guarantees to be determined within negotiations.

President Voronin qualified the day of adoption of the Law as a “historical” date and said that from that day on Moldova “will not sit and look how Transnistria is becoming an exchange currency in someone’s geo-strategic politics, but will get involved actively in the resolution of this problem”, according to the Chisinau based Info-prim agency. At the same time, Voronin said that Chisinau would not negotiate with Tiraspol the status of the region, but only matters related to the demilitarisation and democratisation of the region, two key conditions for a final settlement of the conflict.

In a TV show on 23 July, William Hill, the Head of the OSCE Mission to Moldova, welcomed the adoption of the Moldovan Law and mentioned that the most important thing is that the law guarantees a special status for Transnistria within the Republic of Moldova, according to Infotag. The delegation of powers and parties’ guarantees will be discussed after democratic elections are held in the region, said Hill, for whose organisation the OSCE will provide assistance. Hill said it was improbable that these elections will be held by the end of 2005 and regretted an eventual decision by the Tiraspol administration to call elections to the Supreme Soviet in December 2005. “In the event that these elections take place, they will have the same fate as the previous ones: they will not be recognised by the OSCE, the Council of Europe and the international community”, Hill was quoted by Infotag as saying.

As for the reaction of the other participants in the current five-sided negotiations mechanism, the main objection of Ukraine, Russia and the Transnistrian authorities was that the Moldovan Parliament adopted the law unilaterally, without consulting the Transnistrian side.

Dmitri Tkaci, Ambassador with Special Missions within the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry stated within an interview to Radio Free Europe on 26 July that the Republic of Moldova is a sovereign state and its Parliament can adopt the laws it considers necessary, but that Ukraine believes that some elements from the law adopted in Chisinau go over the limits of the first stage of Yushcenko’s plan. These elements are part of the second stage which is to follow after the elections to the Supreme Soviet and will involve the participation of the Transnistrian side in the drafting of the special legal status of Transnistria should the elections be recognised as free and fair. Moreover, Tkaci said, the law omits a number of important provisions agreed earlier between the parties, such as the guarantees to Transnistria in the event that Moldova changes its legal status. Regardless of these shortages, Ambassador Tkaci said, the Law is a good starting document for further discussions and the important thing is that the law delimitates Transnistria as a region with its own legislative body and it creates the necessary premises for conducting democratic elections for it. According to Tkaci, in Odessa in the near future will be organised a new round of consultations at which the problematic elements of the law will be discussed as well as such issues as the deployment of an EU border monitoring mission and the organisation of an international inspection of the Transnistrian military-industrial complex. It is worth noting that during his visit to Kiev on 19 July, the EU High Representative for CFSP Javier Solana handed in to President Yushcenko a letter from him and the EC President Jose Manuel Barroso in which the EU pledges support for the monitoring of the Ukrainian-Moldovan border, in reply to a joint letter from Presidents Yushcenko and Voronin.

The Russian Federation has not published an official reaction to the Moldovan Law yet, but in a Radio Free Europe interview with Ambassador Nesteruskin, Russia’s Special Representative to the negotiations, the latter implied that such important laws may not be adopted unilaterally. Earlier, the Russian Foreign Ministry published a communique in which it rejected the blueprint of the law being drafted in Chisinau at the time without the participation of the Transnistrian side.

On the other hand, according to Russian news agencies, quoted by Radio Free Europe, the Transnistrian leader Igor Smirnov said that by adopting the 22 July Law, Moldova “buried” for good the Yushcenko plan, and that he will negotiated with the Moldovan authorities only within the limits of the mandate he has from the Supreme Soviet, which only involves negotiations over the creation of a confederation with Moldova. It is worth noting that on 14 July Igor Smirnov, accompanied by a numerous delegation of Transnistrian administration representatives, made a visit to Kiev, at the invitation of the Ukrainian President Victor Yushcenko. According to the official Transnistrian news agency Olvia-press, as a result of this visit Igor Smirnov reaffirmed his support for the Ukrainian initiative and agreed to a series of measures to “normalise the Moldovan-Transnistrian relations”. These included the resumption of the negotiations process and the invitation of the US and EU representatives to joint it as observers, the consolidation of the Ukrainian peace keeping mission, the deployment of an international border monitoring mission under the EU aegis, etc. Notably, Smirnov’s visit to Kiev passed almost unnoticed in the Moldovan press and only many days later President Voronin declared that the visit was coordinated by the Moldovan and Ukrainian authorities and its purpose was to get the Transnistrian side to accept the Ukrainian settlement plan.

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Transnistrian Conflict on July 4–29, 2005

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