Reports
LIBERALS CLAIM THEY WERE PROVOKED INTO ETHNIC STRIFE
Chisinau. The Liberal Party has claimed it had come across provocations aimed at pushing the Liberals into an ethnic unrest during the car caravan they had organized last Sunday in support of Russian troop withdrawal from Transnistria.
On Tuesday, Liberal Party Chairman Mihai Ghimpu stated at a news conference in Infotag that the caravan was conceived as a peaceful action to improve the provincial residents’ awareness “of the danger of the Russian army’s presence in the territory of Moldova”.
“However, instead of backing us, the Communist authorities did all they could to compromise our enterprise. The conflicts in Chisinau, where 19 our drivers were fined and deprived of their driving licenses, and in Balti, where caravan participants were attacked by young locals, were aimed at instigating us to an ethnic strife and to hatred against people speaking a different language”, said Mihai Ghimpu.
According to him, an overt clash between the Russian-speakers and Romanian-speakers was even supposed to take place, because “the Communists are realizing they can no more fool the populace with fairy tales about cheap sausages and high salaries, so they have decided to provoke an ethnic strife”.
The Liberal leader promised his party would continue their action, for “the Russian army, staying in the separatist republic on the left Dniester bank is but a black hole of the Moldovan economy. Only withdrawal of the Russian army can bring us to resolving the Transnistria conflict, and Moldova will then get integrated into the European Union”.
Ghimpu stated he is going to apply to the General Prosecutor's Office to demand that the responsible for the last Sunday’s incidents must bear responsibility before the law.
The Liberals’ caravan against the Russian military presence caused different reactions along their itinerary, and in Balti city the local Komsomol (acronym for Kommunisticheskii Soyuz Molodezhi – the USSR Young Communists’ League) activists did not let the voyagers organize a meeting in the city’s central square.
