Moldova's President Peter Luchinsky attends the CIS summit in Moscow, May 9, 1997.
Photo: Pavel Kassin
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Conflict Settlement Patters
It is a landmark event that the negotiations process between Chisinau and Tiraspol has resumed. The world keeps bubbling with discussion of the ‘Kosovo precedent’. The interest to patterns for solving inner conflicts grows drastically, and there are about 150 such conflicts in the world. Each of them has its own inherent cause. The conflict in Kosovo had ethnic basis, while the conflict in Transdniestria is different, for it has social and political implication. Now is high time to recall the document signed by Chisinau and Tiraspol in Kiev in 1999. It clearly reads that there are no reasons – neither ethnic, nor cultural, nor religious, nor economic, for not uniting Moldova.
It is a crucially important statement. The Transdniestrian settlement’s mediators want to show that on the post-Soviet territory there can be implemented a pattern of settlement alternative to Kosovo – through compromise and agreement. Moreover, there are favorable premises for it. It is very important that the property issue in Transdniestria has been solved to large extent. Property owners are mostly large Russian companies that want to work in a recognized legal field.
I believe the following three steps should become the next stage on the way to unification. First, a fundamental agreement on uniting the country. Second, creation of united economic space inside the Moldovan state. Third, developing a unified law system for the outer borders’ functioning.
Here is the minimum without which it is impossible to go further. The next step should be to obtain the guarantees for the status of united Moldovan state and to provide for the united country the economic aid from the conflict settlement’s mediators. Practically, it might imply the support fir several large projects in industry and infrastructure, which would secure the sustainable development for united Moldova.
Another factor that creates premises for settling the Transdniestrian conflict is the absence of the issue of the country’s possible membership in NATO, an issue that undermines the situation in Georgia and Ukraine. It should be pointed out that according to its constitution, Moldova is a neutral state whose territory cannot host other countries’ military bases or armed forces. That point on Moldova’s neutrality can be changed only by means of a nation-wide referendum. I was the chairman of the constitutional committee when we were ratifying the constitution, and I would like to remind that the entire parliament unanimously supported that article, even the parliament’s pro-Europe and pro-West members.
That is one of the differences of Moldova’s situation from that of Georgia and Ukraine. However, the difference does not necessarily mean that the Transdniestrian settlement’s experience will not make any impact on the settlement in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Nagorny Karabakh. For each solved conflict anyway becomes an example for other unsettled conflicts.
Peter Luchinsky, Moldova’s ex-president
All the Article in Russian as of Apr. 08, 2008
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