OSCE comments on Russia's Transdniestria settlement plan

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe believes that Russia's Transdniestrian settlement plan takes due account of the interests of both parties to the conflict-that is, Moldova and its breakaway Transdniestria province. A high-ranking official in the OSCE Secretariat said this in a RIA interview on condition of anonymity, as an official copy of the plan has not yet reached the OSCE headquarters in Vienna.

According to the source, the OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Dutch Foreign Minister Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who has repeatedly met with top officials of Moldova and Transdniestria, is personally interested in getting the conflict resolved as soon as possible. Scheffer will in all probability approve of the Russian plan as a document mindful not just of the need to draft a new Moldovan constitution, but also of the necessity of restoring stability to the entire region, something to benefit not just Chisinau and Tiraspol, but also Moscow, Kiev, Bucharest, and Komrat (the capital city of Gagauzia, an autonomy within Moldova).

As the official pointed out, the OSCE top welcomed Russian President Vladimir Putin's Monday speech on Transdniestria as a positive step toward bringing a peaceful settlement to the protracted conflict in the area, one of the most important within the zone of OSCE operations.

The OSCE leadership make much of the fact that the Russian President is personally participating in the efforts to resolve the Transdniestria issue and that he took time to speak about it to the world community today, our interviewee remarked.