Tiraspol, February 17. /Novosti Pridnestrovya/. Responding to the initiative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office Bujar Osmani Pridnestrovie proposed to Moldova to hold an informal meeting in the 5+2 format in the North Macedonian capital Skopje soon.
This was announced by Vitaly Ignatiev, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Pridnestrovie, after today's meeting of political representatives of the PMR and the Republic of Moldova.
According to him, it turned out that the representatives of Moldova were not ready to accept this idea.
“I was surprised to see that my Moldovan colleague [Oleg Serebrian] pretended that he did not understand what was at stake. Then we reminded that informal meetings of the 5+2 format were held in 2007-2012, in 2015,” the PMR Minister of Foreign Affairs noted.
“I see that the Moldovan side is trying all forces to avoid the negotiation process in the 5+2 format. Probably it [the Moldovan side] feels uncomfortable to fulfill previous commitments or to follow the principles and procedures [of the negotiation process]. Chisinau plays some kind of political maneuvering game: let's communicate, but not work in the framework of the format,” the minister said.
He commented on today's statement by Oleg Serebrian that 2022 "was successful, and perhaps the most successful in terms of the negotiation process between Chisinau and Tiraspol." “I think that every Pridnestrovian understands how “successful” the negotiation process with Moldova was last year. Everyone sees how many problems we’ve got,” Vitaly Ignatiev said.
At the same time, he agreed with Oleg Serebrian that the preservation of peace and security in the region was an important achievement. “But this peace and security are threatened by the Moldovan side,” the PMR Minister of Foreign Affairs stressed, referring to the “law on separatism” adopted in early February in Moldova.
It should be noted that the last negotiating round in the 5+2 format was held in October 2019. It ended without signing the final protocol. It was frustrated because of the position of the then-political representative of Moldova, Vasily Shova.
Since then, there have been no official or informal meetings in the 5+2 format, and stagnation has been observed in the negotiations between the PMR and the RM. At the same time, since 2022, Moldova began to resort to new measures of pressure on Pridnestrovie, in particular, blocking the import of vital goods.
The 5+2 format includes Pridnestrovie and Moldova (sides of the unsettled conflict), Russia and Ukraine (guarantor and mediator countries), the OSCE (mediator), as well as the European Union and the United States (observers).
