BRATISLAVA PROTOCOL FAILED TO BE SIGNED DUE TO MOLDOVA’S STANCE – TRANSNISTRIAN MFA

The chief negotiator of the unrecognized Transnistrian Moldovan Republic, its minister of foreign affairs Vitaly Ignatiev has stated that at the 5+2 format meeting, which ended in Bratislava on Thursday, “the parties decided to stop the clock for a while”.

Commenting on the meeting, Ignatiev said that “it was a fairly rare phenomenon: the meeting remained unfinished”.

“In the nearest time we will continue our work on essential problems and on the final Protocol of the meeting. It was a consolidated decision because we have failed to achieve a consensus in Bratislava. And though the Tiraspol delegation agreed to sign the Protocol proposed by the OSCE, due to the Chisinau’s position we all had to announce a pause in the negotiations”, said the Transnistrian foreign minister.

In his words, the discussions were “very hard”. The parties discussed the problem of politically motivated criminal litigations, including those related to the farmland usage disputes in the Dubasari Raion, questions of telecommunications and of Transnistrian motorists’ participation in the international road traffic.

The Transnistrian side raised the question of importation of medicines, foodstuffs and other consumer goods in the context of the Moldo-Ukrainian customs/border control at the strategic-importance Cuciurgan border-crossing station, the importation of fuels and lubricants through the northern Moldovan railroad branch, etc.

“A special attention was attached to banking issues. We discussed the problem of the closure of Transnistrian enterprises’ accounts at Moldovan banks. We distributed reference information about the number of Transnistrian economic entities that have suffered of the closure. These are large industrial enterprises that are responsible for repaying salaries to the large collectives of their workers. This is an extremely acute problem, and all the international partners have agreed to outline it. But Chisinau was unprepared for the formulations proposed by us, and tried to present the situation as if there is no problem. So, we shall continue working over this question. I should say that at the forthcoming [November] Bavaria Conference, the banking topic will be one of central ones”, promised the minister.

Vitaly Ignatiev said that in the draft Protocol, “all the international partners have highlighted that Transnistria had met all its commitments, unlike the Moldovan side”.

“Also, concrete timeframes were indicated in the document, during which Chisinau is supposed to solve concrete problems. Perhaps, that was the reason why the final Protocol of the Bratislava meeting failed to be signed”, said Vitaly Ignatiev.