Tiraspol, March 29. /Novosti Pridnestrovya/. The foreign ministry held the first in 2018 meeting of the Public Expert Council. Its chairman, foreign minister Vitaly Ignatyev, spoke about the ministry's work in the period since the last meeting. The council includes representatives of the legislative and executive branches of power, public organisations, the leading media and the national communities.
The minister paid special attention to the recent visits to Pridnestrovie of Russia's deputy foreign minister Grigory Karasin and special representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office Franco Frattini. He also focussed on the country's immediate foreign policy plans.
In particular, the minister announced that the possibility of holding a meeting between the presidents of Pridnestrovie and Moldova, Vadim Krasnoselsky and Igor Dodon, was being considered at the moment. The date and place of the meeting are not yet known.
According to Ignatyev, the meeting will be devoted to the current situation in the functioning of the peacekeeping operation on the Dniester and the work of its governing body, the Joint Control Commission (JCC).
"At the first meeting of Vadim Krasnoselsky and Igor Dodon, which was held in Bender on January 4 last year [ -the second one was held on 30 March 2017 in the residence of the president of Moldova in Holercani], an agreement was reached to unblock the work of the JCC. Preparations are currently being made for the meeting, at which the issue of peacekeeping will be also raised," said Vitaly Ignatiev.
Before the beginning of 2017, for many months Moldova had disrupted JCC meetings under hollow pretexts. At present, the commission also has certain difficulties connected with the disagreement of the parties over the use of the bridge over the Dniester in the area of the villages Gura Bicului (Moldova) and Bychok (Pridnestrovie). Blown up during the 1992 war, it was reconstructed in 2001. However, the bridge was closed for movement until November 2017 because of Kishinev's refusal to guarantee its use in for non-military purposes only. In November 2017, a protocol decision was signed, in which this issue was specially stipulated. The bridge was first opened for the movement of motor cars and then for lorries with a carrying capacity of up to 10 tonnes.
Also, during the meeting of the Public Expert Council, Vitaly Ignatyev announced the resumption of the work of expert subgroups on issues of interbank cooperation and the start of the functioning of the subgroup on human rights issues.
Discussing the implementation of the agreements reached, the foreign minister noted that several diplomas issued by Pridnestrovian State University had already passed apostille verification. According to the minister, at present PSU has more than 20 applications for an additional diploma and their subsequent verification. An apostille is a special stamp that gives the right to continue studies and to work in more than 200 countries that signed the Hague Convention on Apostille.
Speaking about apostille verification, Vitaly Ignatyev refuted the reports that appeared in social networks, about the Moldovan seals being allegedly attached to Pridnestrovian diplomas and about replacing them with "neutral" ones.
"No Moldovan seals are set to PSU diplomas; they [diplomas] are not replaced. An additional diploma is given, which will be apostilled. This additional option will make our university a regional centre of attraction - it will contribute to its own development and the development of our country," the foreign minister said in this regard, adding that he knew about the desire of many school leavers from Ukraine and Moldova to study at PSU. "They used to be stopped by the lack of employment prospects outside our country after graduation," underscored Ignatyev.
