APE staff

CHIȘINĂU (Imedia) și Moscow will continue providing humanitarian aid to Transnistria throughout this entire year, said Russian M.P. Vladimir Medinski during a visit to Tiraspol. Mr. Medinski is part of the ruling Edinnaia Rossia [Imedia: United Russia] party's general council. Opions on this news by Evghenii Shevciuk, Nicu Popopescu and Vladislav Kulminski.

In the course of my two terms as Head of the OSCE Mission in Chisinau I witnessed almost seven years of talks, contacts, walkouts, crises, recriminations, and renewals of the political settlement negotiations. Looking back and ruminating on my rather lengthy involvement in the process, I come to the following observations about both the Moldova-Transdniestria political settlement process, and negotiation and mediation in general.

Nicu Popescu, a political analyst and researcher with the London-based European Council for Foreign Relations, says that a distinction needs to be made between integration and cooperation. „European integration is absolutely compatible with very good relations with Russia, Ukraine, or Armenia, but is incompatible with integration in the CIS. European integration implies European values and legislation și the CIS is very different from the EU in this sense. Russian standards, for example, when it comes to democracy or the economy, are different from European standards, for which reason Moldova cannot simultaneously integrate in both directions,” argues Mr. Popescu.

Voronin has always been more sensitive to Russian opposition to GUAM than the other leaders, and that opposition is growing given what many in Moscow see as the anti-Russian policies being pursued by Georgia and a lesser extent by Azerbaijan. Consequently, the Moldovan leader appears to want to distance himself and his country from them. Whether Chisinau will actually decide to leave GUAM or whether Voronins remarks now reflect his frustration at being ignored or treated as the odd man out within the grouping remains an open question. But the answer is critical. If Moldova goes, GUAM could disappear from the scene, but if it remains, Voronins standing at home and in many places abroad will fall.

Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin said on Tuesday that he might soon meet his Russian counterpart Dmitri Medvedev to talk about the Transnistrian problem. The...

The Ukraine-Russia gas crisis has ended, and one might think everyone has returned to business as usual. But after Ukraine, the next item of business is Moldova. Russia, as both European Union and U.S. officials recall, has used gas for political leverage on previous occasions,