MOLDOVA STILL "HOPING" FOR RUSSIAN TROOP WITHDRAWAL.

In his address to the U.N. General Assembly, Moldovan foreign minister Mihai Popov cited resolutions by the OSCE and other international fora calling for the "complete, orderly and unconditional withdrawal" of Russian troops from Moldova. He neither presented this demand in Moldova´s own name nor solicited international support to bring about the troops´ withdrawal. Popov expressed his country´s "hope that the Russian Federation´s competent authorities will speed up the ratification" of the October 1994 Russian-Moldovan agreement on troop withdrawal. (13)

The intervening year has demonstrated that the 1994 agreement has no chance of being ratified by Russia´s Duma, and that it is being equally disregarded by Russia´s executive branch which asks for military basing rights in Moldova and keeps its troops there. Unlike the Baltic countries, however, Moldova has failed to use the rostrum of the U.N. and other international organizations to appeal for support. President Mircea Snegur and other Moldovan officials fear that doing so would anger Russia. Snegur, who is known to personally screen his foreign ministers´ U.N. speeches, professes the belief that Boris Yeltsin will ultimately solve this problem for Moldova.

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