Transnistria and Gagauzia

​INFORMAL 5+2 MEETING BEING HELD IN VIENNA

21 april, 2015

A 5+2 format meeting on Transnistrian conflict settlement began in Vienna on Monday.

As already reported by Infotag, this is an informal meeting having no concrete agenda – a first such event over last half a year because in 2014, only two official meetings in the 5+2 negotiating format were held out of projected five, and the rest three were cancelled due to Tiraspol’s unwillingness to take part in them under various pretexts.

The Moldovan delegation is being led by Chisinau’s Political Representative at the negotiations, Deputy Prime Minister for Reintegration Affairs Victor Osipov, and the Transnistrian delegation – by the region’s chief negotiator, minister of foreign affairs Nina Shtanski. The meeting is being attended by the representatives of international mediators – the Russian Federation, Ukraine and the OSCE, and of observers – the European Union and the United States.

It well may be that Tiraspol will again raise the question of economic blockade of Transnistria, particularly from Ukraine’s side. At any rate, in the run-up to the meeting, Transnistrian president Yevgeny Shevchuk requested the foreign ministry to analyze the presence of politically motivated goals in the actions by the customs agencies from the neighboring countries and by the European Union Border Assistance Mission to Moldova and Ukraine (EUBAM) with respect to Transnistrian economic operators.

Shevchuk stressed: “In the period when the 5+2 negotiating format is working and when elements of a fragile trust are being restored, when elements of mutual understanding and compromises on more basic problems are beginning to be seen, the actions by negotiation participants, in particular by Ukrainian partners, are considerably causing the losses of our budget and, as a consequence, are making it impossible to finance fully our repaying salaries to public-sector employees and pensions to the citizens of Transnistria, Ukraine, Russia and the Republic of Moldova who live in the Transnistrian territory”.

The accord to hold such assembly in Vienna was reached in the course of the meeting, which Victor Osipov and Nina Shtanski held at the end of March. Shtanski emphasized then that the meeting should not be regarded as resumption of the 5+2 format negotiation process but only as a consultative meeting.

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