RUSSIAN DEPUTY FOREIGN MINISTER FOR PRACTICAL REALIZATION OF ACCORDS

Russia's Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs - State Secretary Grigory Karasin regards as "a matter of paramount importance" the practical realization of the accords reached in the Transnistrian conflict settlement and control over this process. He stated this in Tiraspol on Wednesday in his meeting with Transnistrian leadership representatives.

The diplomat highly appreciated the recent invigoration of the 5+2 negotiation process, remarking that a direct dialog has led to concrete results. Discussing the current Moldova-Transnistria negotiation agenda, Karasin called it "quite ripe".

The interlocutors qualified as "topical questions requiring urgent solution" the need to work out a mechanism of Transnistrian motor vehicles' participation in the international road traffic, the opening of railroad freight communication via the Slobodka station, settlement of problems in the banking sphere, putting an end to politically motivated criminal litigations.

The interlocutors reviewed also the general perspectives of Russia-Transnistria relations and the entire spectrum of important cooperation directions.

Commenting on the growing demands to remove the Russian troops from the territory of Transnistria, Grigory Karasin characterized such statements and resolutions as "unsubstantiated" and "nothing more than exercises in diplomatic eloquence".

"They cannot bring whatever constructive consequences. Rather, they only provoke unnecessary temperatures in these matters. All arising questions must be tackled and solved within existing agreed-on formats that are well known: via an international dialog and dialog between the leaderships of Transnistria and Moldova. There are no other ways to resolving the troop question. This has been said directly to the Republic of Moldova leadership. I hope Chisinau has heard our position", said the Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Grigory Karasin thanked the government and all those residents of Transnistria who are citizens of the Russian Federation for their active participation in the March 18 Russian presidential election, for "the excellent organization of the voting and ballot count", which he remarked was really a hard job to do with an account of the considerable number of the people who came to the polls: "74 thousand is a really significant figure".