Tiraspol, 8 June. /Novosti Pridnestrovya/. Pridnestrovie's MFA hosted a meeting between the acting foreign minister, Vitaly Ignatyev, and the Austrian delegation, led by the director general for management of the Ministry of European and Foreign Affairs, Michael Zimmermann. The meeting was also attended by the head of the Austrian Development Agency to Moldova, Gerhard Schaumberger.
As Vitaliy Ignatyev pointed out, the Pridnestrovian side highly appreciates the possibility of exchanging opinions with Austrian representatives, especially in advance of Austria's OSCE chairmanship in 2017. «We regard Austria as one of the most significant partners of Pridnestrovie and hope for their positive contribution to the process of the Moldo-Pridnestrovian settlement," the MFA's press service cites the minister as saying.
Michael Zimmermann, in turn, announced that Austria is actively preparing for the upcoming OSCE chairmanship, the programme of which will be soon presented. He also pointed out that since Austria's last OSCE chairmanship in 2000 the Moldo-Pridnestrovian settlement has not shown positive trends.
Vitaliy Ignatyev confirmed that in the past years the dialogue between the sides had significantly deteriorated, with new problems in relations between Pridnestrovie and Moldova added to old ones. This particularly refers to new restrictions unilaterally imposed by the Moldovan side, including with Ukraine's involvement.
According to the Pridnestrovian minister, under current circumstances the negotiation process is an important international instrument normalising the situation in many spheres.
Vitaliy Ignatyev highly assessed the results of a permanent conference meeting in the 5+2 format, which took place on 2−3 June in Berlin, saying that the protocol signed after the meeting expressed international participants' mutual opinion about the necessity of intense and substantive work to resolve a number of sensitive problems. According to the minister, Pridnestrovie has already presented comprehensive draft agreements on every sphere indicated in the protocol, whereas Moldova has refused to express its reasoned position on many of them for several months.
Interlocutors also discussed some aspects of bilateral cooperation between Pridnestrovie and Austria in the socio-humanitarian and ecological spheres, particularly in the context of the possible implementation of a number of joint projects.
The sides agreed to maintain contacts on issues of mutual interest.
