MOSCOW REPUDIATES AGREEMENT TO WITHDRAW TROOPS FROM MOLDOVA.

Emerging from top-level political talks on Transdniester conflict settlement (see below), Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeev stated that Russian troops will remain in that part of Moldova "until the differences over a political settlement have been fully resolved." Sergeev drew an analogy between the open-ended stationing of Russian troops in Moldova and the international peacekeeping operation in Bosnia, describing that operation as similarly open ended. (Russian agencies, March 20 and 21)

Sergeev was speaking in the presence of Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, who in 1994 had signed on behalf of the Russian government with his Moldovan counterpart an agreement to withdraw the troops within three years. Moscow failed to honor the agreement, but paid some lip service to it. Sergeev’s statement amounts to an official repudiation of that agreement.

Top-Level Russian-Ukrainian-Moldovan Meeting on Transdniester.