MOLDOVA….

Despite earlier agreements, the government in Chisinau has not paid Russia’s Gazprom monopoly for its 1998 deliveries. Gazprom’s chairman has announced a cut-off of nearly all supplies to Moldova until the government starts paying for current deliveries and makes progress toward reducing arrears. Gazprom is also pulling out of a deal to take over Moldova’s gas distribution and power-generation system, at least for now. Moldova may now try once again to negotiate payment in agricultural products, as Belarus and Ukraine have done, but there is no reason to believe that Gazprom will accept a deal that it has rejected before.