Transnistria and Gagauzia

​IN TRANSNISTRIAN CONFLICT SETTLEMENT, MOLDOVA SHOULD PROCEED FROM ITS INTERESTS – ADVISER

25 november, 2016

Mihai Godea, the National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister, believes that in the Transnistrian conflict settlement process, Moldova should proceed primarily from its national interests.

Speaking at the conference on Transnistrian conflict settlement organized by the Association for External Policy, Godea said: “In this thorny question, no intermediate decisions are needed, for they lead only to marking time by Tiraspol and to holding us away from a final conflict settlement. The settlement context has substantially changed lately. Every actor in the settlement process has its own truth or, rather, own interests. Our interest is: by resolving the Transnistrian problem, we must save the functionality of our state, its territorial integrity, democracy and freedom”.

In his words, presently Ukraine is showing an unprecedented interest to Transnistrian conflict settlement, and is backing Moldova’s efforts in this direction.

“In the person of Ukraine, we now have a mediator that has itself come across an imposed armed conflict in its territory and across separatism. Ukraine is showing interest to our efforts and is supporting them. Kiev is demonstrating an unprecedented support and openness, which we should certainly use. Ukraine is interested as never before to extinguish this seat of tension on its border. This coincides with Moldova’s interests”, said the prime ministerial adviser.

Touching on the documents signed over the whole period of Transnistria settlement negotiations, Godea said they contain a number of dangerous traps.

“If you analyze them attentively, you will inevitably come to a conclusion that we should either recognize Transnistria’s sovereignty or put off the conflict settlement until better times. Scrutinizing the Primakov Memorandum of 1997 and the Kozak Memorandum of 2003, you will inevitably wonder: to which extent did those documents take Moldova’s interests into account?” said Mihai Godea.

He reminded that in the Transnistrian conflict settlement process, there are 3 baskets of questions, namely: socio-economic issues; citizens’ rights and freedoms; and political settlement and security.

“Transnistria stands categorically against negotiating the 3rd basket. We have an impression as if Moldova has infringed on Transnistria’s sovereignty and therefore Tiraspol aims solely at making everybody recognize this sovereignty. But this is not so! Moldova must proceed from its national interests, and can delegate a part of its sovereignty to Transnistria, but only after a legal status has been defined for the region within the Republic of Moldova. Presently, the context of the Transnistrian conflict settlement has strongly changed, and new opportunities have appeared that must be used for the sake of solving problems. Intermediate solutions are inadmissible because the conflict settlement needs a complex-like approach”, stated Mihai Godea, and underlined that this is his personal position, and not the Government’s official stance.

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