MOLDOVAN PRESIDENT DEFIES COURT, STEPS TO BRINK OF COUP.

President Mircea Snegur sent and made public Saturday April 6 an ultimatum-like letter to Prime Minister Andrei Sangheli, demanding that Sangheli initiate the dismissal of defense minister Lt. General Pavel Creanga. The letter gave the prime minister until today to submit a nomination for defense minister to Snegur for his approval. Snegur’s letter made no reference to the Constitutional Court’s April 4 verdict, which ruled that his dismissal of Creanga had violated the law and the constitution. As he had in connection with his initial dismissal of the minister, the president’s April 6 letter referred to unproven allegations of misappropriation of funds in the Defense Ministry since Creanga assumed leadership of the ministry in 1992 as the justification for sacking him. (Flux, Basapress, April 6)

Moldovan political and military officials told The Monitor that Snegur’s appointee as acting minister, Maj. General Tudor Dabija, remains ensconced in the Defense Ministry with Snegur’s national security adviser, Colonel (retired) Ion Gheorghita, together with some officers and a military police unit loyal to Dabija personally. Dabija exercises day-to-day operational management in defiance of the Constitutional Court verdict which ruled his appointment by Snegur illegal. Over the weekend, Dabija and Gheorghita made public a statement, allegedly adopted by an assembly of Defense Ministry and Chisinau garrison officers "by a vote of 100 to 1," insisting on Creanga’s dismissal and demanding that the government and parliament accept it. Creanga had been loyal to the president until last month, when he refused to propagandize among the military for Snegur’s reelection.

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