PRIMAKOV BROKERS CHISINAU-TIRASPOL TALKS.

Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov mediated a five-hour negotiating session among top Moldovan officials and Transdniester leaders in Chisinau on the night of April 10-11. Primakov and the Chisinau and Tiraspol leaders told a post-midnight news conference that agreement was reached on resuming negotiations aimed at settling the Transdniester conflict. The parties added a key article to the June 1996 memorandum on the principles on settling the conflict. The new article stipulates that the central government and the Transdniester authorities will build their relations in the framework of a single Moldovan state within the 1990 borders of the former Moldovan SSR. Chisinau and Tiraspol leaders also agreed to sign the memorandum’s final text without any further additions or changes in Moscow next month, along with Russian, Ukrainian, and OSCE mediators. (Basapress, Flux, April 11-12)

The parties and the mediators had initialed the memorandum in June 1996. But Chisinau and the Ukrainian and OSCE mediators asked afterward for an explicit affirmation of Moldova’s internationally recognized territorial integrity in the final text. Tiraspol refused and withdrew from the negotiations. The Primakov-mediated formula is a compromise allowing the negotiations to resume.

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