Tiraspol, March 14. /Novosti Pridnestrovya/. Mediation efforts of the OSCE are currently extremely insufficient and very passive. The time has come to activate them in order to break the deadlock in the negotiations between Tiraspol and Chisinau.
Minister of Foreign Affairs of the PMR Vitaly Ignatiev stated this in an interview with the First Pridnestrovian TV channel. He commented on the recent visit to Tiraspol of the Special Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office Thomas Mayer-Harting.
“Everything must be done to ensure that the OSCE Mission /in Moldova/ fulfills its mandates, deals with security issues in the context of the militarization of Moldova, and does everything to prevent violations of the rights of the half-million multinational Pridnestrovian people. These are the accents that European and OSCE officials are embarrassed to talk about. We expect that the OSCE work in the Pridnestrovian direction will be more practically oriented and more effective,” Vitaly Ignatiev noted.
He recalled that in April the current Chairman of the organization, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Malta, Ian Borg, is expected to visit Tiraspol. “We hope to discuss security issues with the Chairman-in-Office in a very detailed and substantive manner,” the head of the PMR Foreign Ministry said.
Let us remind you that the main negotiating platform for the Moldovan-Pridnestrovian settlement is the “5+2” format with the participation of Pridnestrovie and Moldova (parties to the conflict), the OSCE, Russia and Ukraine (mediators), the EU and the United States (observers). The work of the format has been frozen for five years, after the political representative of Moldova at a meeting in Bratislava refused to sign the final protocol.
Since then, the situation in the negotiations between Tiraspol and Chisinau has only worsened. New forms of economic pressure continue to emerge from Moldova, there are cases of detention and deportation of Pridnestrovian residents at the Chisinau airport, and social and humanitarian issues related to the supply of medicines and medical equipment to the PMR are not resolved. The Moldovan authorities have withdrawn from a number of important agreements reached within the “5+2” format in 2016-2017. Another part of the agreements is not being implemented by Chisinau.
PMR President Vadim Krasnoselsky, at a meeting with the special representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office Thomas Mayer-Harting, noted that “the entire policy that Moldova is building against Pridnestrovie is based on lies, political and economic pressure, which violates human rights.”
