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Russia to Solve Transdniestrian Conflict
// to spite the West
Moldova’s President Vladimir Voronin and Transdniestria’s leader Igor Smirnov talked to each other on the phone on Monday, first time in the last seven years. They agreed to meet so as to discuss the opportunities for reconciliation between the Dniester’s two banks. Moscow is instrumental in arranging the meeting, which is to be held soon, according to Kommersant’s information. So, the Transdniestrian conflict’s settlement now enters its final stage. Using Moldavia’s example, Russia wants to teach to the West a lesson of correct solving of territorial conflicts.
Enmity and Peace
It was official Chisinau who first published the sensational news about the telephone conversation between the two uncompromising opponents, which took place yesterday. “Moldova’s President Vladimir Voronin and Transdniestria’s leader Igor Smirnov agreed, during their telephone conversation on Monday, to held a personal meeting to discuss the issues of developing and strengthening the measures of trust between Chisinau and Tiraspol,” said Voronin’s press service, without specifying the landmark meeting’s date and place.
Authorities of the internationally unrecognized Pridnestrovian Moldovan Republic (PMR) were more open. Smirnov’s website published a press release explaining that the conversation was Chisinau’s initiative, and that Smirnov and Voronin exchanged opinions on the Moldova-Transdniestria settlement’s status. Besides, the press release said there will be one-on-one negotiations between the leaders to discuss “the draft universal treaty on friendship and cooperation between Moldova and Transdniestria, and Moldova’s initiatives for developing and strengthening the measures of trust”. The upcoming meeting’s date and place was neither disclosed in the press release.
Sources in Moldova’s administration said on Monday that no one is going to postpone the meeting. “Now there are perfect conditions for the problem’s compromise-based solution. The leaders’ meeting might give an impulse to that. It is too early to name the precise date yet. I can only say it is going to take place very soon,” assured a high-ranking source in Moldova’s government.
Meanwhile, not just the upcoming meeting, but even the telephone conversation between Voronin and Smirnov can be regarded as a turning point in the Transdniestrian conflict settlement. They last talked to each other in 2001, when Moldovan Communists’ leader Voronin (born in Transdniestria, by the way) was elected as Moldovan president for the first time. He came to power under the slogan of restoring the country’s territorial integrity and joining the Russia-Belarus union. Voronin decided not to put off the long-standing issue’s settlement and came to Tiraspol for negotiations with Smirnov. However, nothing good came of it back then. Soon after that meeting, Voronin was not allowed to the PMR’s territory (the reasons were not explained), and was proclaimed a persona non grata there. The relations between the Dniester’s left and right bank leaders went hopelessly bad, and communication between them for the next seven years reduced to mutual accusations via mass media.
Voronin first mentioned his intention to forget old insults and to hold new negotiations with Smirnov in his March interview to Kommersant. “If the issue of uniting the country in accordance with the international law is at stake, I’ll sit down to table with anyone. I will carry out negotiations and sign necessary documents. Yet, it should be the final solution. I cannot start again the lingering that went on so far,” said Voronin in March. Apparently, the moment has come at last.
To Spite the World
Moldovan authorities’ reconciliation initiatives immediately found a ready response in Moscow. “Russia hopes that the meeting between Moldova’s and Transdniestria’s leaders will help exit the stalemate in the Transdniestrian settlement’s negotiation process,” Valery Nesterushkin, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s ambassador for special missions, said Monday. “All that is very good. Now we should wait for specific agreements,” said a source in the Russian president’s administration.
The upcoming Voronin-Smirnov meeting will be the fruit of the Russian authorities’ many-month-long work at Moldova’s direction. In recent months, Russia’s Security Council’s Deputy Secretary Yuri Zubakov has been active in shuttle diplomacy, trying to bring closer Chisinau and Tiraspol. While Moldovan authorities were appeasable in that regard, Smirnov’s obstinacy put Moscow to a lot of trouble. On March 13, Smirnov categorically declared in his interview to Kommersant that negotiations with Moldova, and moreover a reunion with it, are out of question, and that Tiraspol would push for recognizing the PMR’s independence. In response, Russia’s authorities made it clear that Transdniestria can hope neither for recognition nor for a special attitude, like that of Russia to Abkhazia or South Ossetia, for instance. Russia’s State Duma adopted in March the recommendations to the Russian Government which fixated a special stand on the PMR, according to which “the opportunities for Transdniestria-Moldova dialogue are not considered to be exhausted”. Already on March 17th, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov received Smirnov. After the meeting, the latter suddenly disproved his own recent statements, and said he is ready to “agree to restoring direct contacts with Vladimir Voronin”.
So, Moscow regards the Transdniestrian conflict as a separate case. Apparently, it is going to use Transdniestria’s example to show to the West that conflicts can be solved by ways different from Kosovo’s – within the framework of preserving a state’s territorial integrity. The Transdniestrian progress must be aimed at putting psychological pressure on Georgia’s President Mikhail Saakashvili as well, who is persistently failing to improve relations with Russia. Meanwhile, Voronin, who made it up with Vladimir Putin, swore that Moldova will never ever join NATO, and even declared he intends to exit the GUAM, is doing better and better: Moldovan wine returned to Russia’s market, and the Transdniestrian settlement has got moving.
Everyone Needs Peace
Favorable conditions for settling the Transdniestrian conflict are due not only to the foreign policy situation and Moscow’s ambition to implement an “Anti-Kosovo” scenario. It is also due to the domestic political situation in Chisinau and Tiraspol. In fact, the parliamentary election in Moldova is scheduled for 2009, and Voronin’s Communist Party has all chances to lose in the election, just like it has already lost in the local elections in strategically important regions of Gagauzia and Chisinau. The upcoming campaign is also important because President Voronin can no longer run for presidency (his second term expires in spring 2009), but he would like to secure the power’s succession. At the 2005 election, held in Moldova during a tough opposition with Moscow, the Communist Party won under the slogans of European integration. However, things are not going very well on that direction now. Moreover, Chisinau managed in 2007 to utterly fall out with its closest neighbor Romania, who recently joined the EU. Brussels does not approve of it, and demands Moldova to make a step towards reconciliation. With this state of affairs, the European integration’s failure might have been compensated for by a successful implementation of another project, such as returning the PMR into Moldova’s structure.
Strange as it may seem, solving the 18-year-long conflict is good for Smirnov as well. After the parliamentary election in Russia, he lost his powerful lobby in Russia’s State Duma (Vice-Speaker Sergei Baburin and Viktor Alksnis were ardent pro-Transdniestria deputies). Besides, Moscow has recently repeatedly expressed discontent at the way Smirnov conducts economic activities in his republic, that is how he spends Russia’s natural gas, the debt for which has already exceeded $1.5 billion. Moreover, with Russia’s active support, Transdniestria now has an alternative to Smirnov, -- the Supreme Council’s ambitious Speaker Evgeny Shevchuk, who does not hide his aspiration for the chief position in the unrecognized republic. So, reconciliation with Moldova might have become a life ring for the first and so far the only president of the PMR, who could have ended his career with dignity, acting as a peacemaker.
Vladimir Soloviev
All the Article in Russian as of Apr. 08, 2008
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