APE staff

One month after a police crackdown that left three young men dead, EU diplomats in Moldova are working on rebuilding internal stability and EU relations.

The recent government crackdown in Moldova on violent protests against allegations of electoral fraud during the April 5 parliamentary vote brings to mind Eric Weiner's "The Geography of Bliss." The author's year-long search for the world's happiest place led him to the conclusion that Moldovans must be the most unhappy people. Without an "abiding faith or culture on which to rely," Mr. Weiner wrote, Moldovans harbor a superstitious world-view that is "free-floating, anchored to nothing but the cloud of pessimism that hovers over this sad land."

OSCE1.Post-election interim report on the 5 April 2009 parliamentary elections in the Republic of Moldova. 17.04.2004.2.OSCE Mission to Moldova condemns post-election violence and appeals...

Expressing our concern regarding the worsening social and political situation after April 5, 2009 parliamentary elections and, being worried that inadequate interpretations of these events serve as justification for decisions and actions that threaten to further polarize the Moldovan society, we declare:

For the first time in recent memory, the heavy hitters of international election monitoring -- the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, the Council of Europe and the European Parliament -- were in agreement with Russia-led observers from the Commonwealth of Independent States: Moldovan parliamentary elections on Sunday were run more or less in accordance with accepted norms. Nonetheless, provocateur-instigated violence and vandalism broke out in Chisinau following massive, peaceful and spontaneous opposition protests.

The European Union is the only political actor with the credibility to find a solution to the current crisis When a crowd of demonstrators stormed Moldova's presidential palace and parliament building this week, many in the west struggled to understand what was happening there. Was it a new Ukraine-style "colour revolution", or a Latvia-style riot sparked by the economic crisis? The truth is it's neither.

Moldova is the latest country in Europe to collapse into crisis after a contested election. Some 15.000 people, communicating through web-sites like ‘Twitter, took to the street to protest against unfair elections taking control of the Parliament and Presidential Palace. The protests follow on from Georgias Rose revolution in 2004, Ukraines Orange Revolution in 2005, and the killing of ten protestors against election fraud in Armenia in March 2008.

Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin has pulled back at the last moment from the brink of a separate deal to put Russia in the driving seat of negotiations on Transnistria. The March 18 joint declaration by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Voronin, and Transnistria leader Igor Smirnov triggered that process. A meeting of Voronin and Smirnov in Tiraspol on March 25 was scheduled as next in the sequence, potentially leading to the presentation of a fait accompli by Moscow to the Western negotiators in the 5+2 format.

The joint declaration by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin, and Transnistria leader Igor Smirnov, signed in Moscow on March 18 (EDM, March 20, 25, 26), is serving Smirnov well as a negotiation-breaker. Citing points in that declaration, Smirnov is now calling openly for marginalizing or bypassing Western participants in the negotiating process, which Moscow and Tiraspol -or the latter fronting for the former- had already brought to a deadlock.

Jonathan Steele is senior foreign correspondent and a columnist for British daily The Guardian, where he has worked for several decades. Mr. Steele was a frequent visitor to the Soviet Union in the 1970s, as a Guardian reporter. He became the paper's Washington correspondent in the second half of the 1970s, and headed The Guardian's Moscow office between 1988 and 1994. Mr. Steele was therefore able to witness the perestroika in the Soviet Union and the subsequent appearance of post-Soviet states as the U.S.S.R. crumbled. He has written aand continues to report on conflicts in Central America, the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Iraq (which he has visited nine times since the beginning of the American military intervention).

Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin's signature on the March 18 Moscow declaration, with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Transnistria's leader Igor Smirnov (Interfax, Russian MFA website, March 18, 19; see EDM, March 20, 25), amounts to a surrender in the final days of Voronin's presidency. This political document has solidified Russia's military presence and increased Russia's scope for influencing Moldova's policy choices through manipulation of the Transnistria conflict. These are the short-term effects and may extend beyond the short term unless a post-Voronin government disavows this move.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's March 18 meeting with Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin and Transnistria leader Igor Smirnov (see EDM, March 20) was designed to mark a qualitatively new stage in the long-running negotiations on the Transnistria conflict. While continuing to block the conflict resolution negotiations, Russia is trying to move the process toward a formula to guarantee Russian control of this part of Moldova, with troops in place. Moldova's general elections, which are scheduled for April 5, give the Kremlin leverage to pressure Voronin into accepting Russia's terms.

Since Transnistria broke away, Moldovan governments have tried to reach a settlement, first with Tiraspol and then directly with Moscow, to find a possible path towards conflict resolution. The problem is that neither path proved to be possible. After the war in Georgia some Western observers wondered whether Russia shouldnt now be willing to send a signal of goodwill and cooperation by resolving the Transnistrian conflict. In fact, the reaction of foreign investors alone showed how economically dependent Russia still is, and that confrontation and isolation damages the trust Russia needs to foster its own development. How isolated Russia has become was demonstrated by the fact that even its closest allies refused to follow its lead in recognizing Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

The Eastern Partnership is an EU attempt to expand its "sphere of influence" in the quest for hydrocarbons, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has said, in Moscow's first major broadside against the new policy. "We are accused of having spheres of influence. But what is the Eastern Partnership, if not an attempt to extend the EU's sphere of influence, including to Belarus," the minister said on Saturday (21 March) at the Brussels Forum, a high-level symposium.