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The results of the Wednesday’s trilateral meeting on Transnistrian
conflict settlement may be equal to naught due to Tiraspol’s unbending
position, influential Kommersant newspaper of Moscow wrote this
morning.
The publication presumes Igor Smirnov may thus
upset Moscow’s plan to demonstratively reconcile the conflicting sides
and to show its being a sound peacekeeper.
“Though Moscow
has managed to organize the Medvedev-Voronin-Smirnov meeting, its
chances of yielding a result desired by the Kremlin are next to zero.
On the one hand, there is an obstacle – the April 5 parliamentary
elections in Moldova, after which the country will receive a new
president because Vladimir Voronin is completing his second, final term
of office. But there is a much more serious obstacle – the positions of
Chisinau’s and Tiraspol’s on a model of resolving the Transnistria
conflict, which are remaining diametrically different”, Kommersant
wrote.
It further held that Moldova keeps on stating the
need to reunify the two Dniester River banks, while the Transnistrian
Moldovan Republic insists on “a final civilized divorce”.
“All
the loud statements about a widest autonomy for Transnistria, heard
regularly from Chisinau, present nothing serious”, Kommersant quoted
Transnistrian leader Igor Smirnov, who offers Chisinau to conclude a
Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation, which would be in fact a basic
political treaty between two equal states.
The
newspaper presumes that with such a stance and moods of Tiraspol’s,
whatever productive meeting, even in the presence of President
Medvedev, and, the more so, signature of a framework document on
conflict settlement principles are absolutely out of the question.
“Besides
this, the very behaviour of Mr. Smirnov’s is placing the Russian
President in an uncomfortable position. Last year, during his meeting
with Voronin in Sochi shortly after the war in Georgia, Mr. Medvedev
confirmed readiness to promote the Transnistrian conflict settlement on
the basis of Moldova’s territorial integrity. The Russian leader stated
then that chances were exiting at precisely that moment as well as very
good possibilities for resolving the Transnistria problem, and that
Russia was ready to make every possible effort for achieving a lasting
settlement of the Transnistrian crisis. He thus made it clear that
Moscow was not going to resolve the Transnistria problem by using the
Abkhazia and South Ossetia model, which Igor Smirnov is insisting on”,
Kommersant said.
The paper also quoted sources in the
Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in the Russian Security Council,
and in the Kremlin, who presume one should not expect any breakthrough
from the March 18 tripartite ‘summit’ on Transnistria.
For
instance, Russian Federation’s Representative at the Transnistrian
conflict negotiations, Ambassador-at-Large Valery Nesteroushkin said,
“We will try to bring the sides to a direct political dialog, without
which no compromise is possible. Today, it is important at least to
tune them [Voronin and Smirnov] into a dialog course. In the situation
when they do not even communicate, it would be naïve to expect that the
problem will melt all by itself. Our task is to help them find
acceptable formulas. What the conflicting sides’ leaders will agree to
will be a final variant”.
According to a Kremlin
source, the Wednesday’s meeting should be used “to make Smirnov
comprehend that nobody in Moscow is going to reconcile with what he
does”.
“However, having no leverage of pressure on
intractable Igor Smirnov, Moscow has to wait until 2011, when his
presidential term of office will expire. So at least until that time,
Russia will have to put off Transnistrian conflict settlement, too”,
Kommersant wrote.
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