Potential Armed Conflict at Moldova Rail Station
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Friday, 02 June 2006
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A stand off between armed police from Moldova and the unrecognized Republic of Trasnistria at a rural rail station brought international train traffic to a near total halt, the Infotag news agency reported Wednesday.
The Russian-speaking province Transnistria seceded from Romanian- speaking Moldova after a war ending in 1992. Both sides since then have continued the conflict, in part, by imposing tit-for-tat rail traffic blockages on each other.
Moldova earlier this month announced plans to avoid further Transistrian interference with Moldovan trains by routing them along a newly-built rail line bypassing Transnistria, and connecting the Molova rail system with the Ukrainian rail network.
Moldovan plans to use the bypass route to begin flagship service between Moscow and Chisinau on June 5 came to a complete halt on Wednesday, after Transnistrian police occupied a site on the bypass line under Moldovan construction as a new switching station.
Moldovan construction of a switching station in close proximity to the unofficial Transnistrian border violated the terms of the 1992 ceasefire agreement between Moldova and Transnistria, Transnistrian officials said.
A one to five kilometre-wide demilitarized zone separates Transnistria and Moldova. The Moldovan switching station would be some 500 meters from the Transnistrian border.
Moldovan para-military police were on the scene as well. The confrontation was tense but leaders of both armed groups agreed to let diplomats sort out the dispute, said Klaus Neurich, a spokesman for the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
Observers from the OSCE and Russia, which maintains peacekeepers in the security zone between Moldova/Transnistria ceasefire line, also were present, Neurich said.
Tensions have increased between Trasnistria and Moldova in recent months because of intensified Moldovan efforts to get Transistria returned to Moldovan sovereignty, including an agreement with Ukraine to ban most Transnistrian exports as contraband.
The Transnistrian economy survives largely on income from smuggled goods. The region's authoritarian leader, Igor Smirnov, is a close ally of the Kremlin.
?? 2006 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur
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