UKRAINE SEES WEAK MOLDOVAN STAND IN TRANSDNIESTER TALKS.

In the Kremlin on May 8 Ukraine will co-sign the memorandum on the principles of settling the Transdniester conflict, but Kiev retains serious reservations about the document, according to President Leonid Kuchma’s representative to the negotiations, Yevhen Levitsky. Interviewed in Chisinau yesterday, Levitsky faulted the memorandum for failing to set a time limit on the presence of Russian troops in Transdniester; rejected the memorandum’s thesis that the CIS possesses valuable peacekeeping experience; called for vesting the OSCE with a peacekeeping role in Transdniester; and pointed to the document’s failure to define the roles of Russia, Ukraine, and the OSCE as guarantors of the political settlement of the conflict. Noting that some of the memorandum’s points had not been agreed upon with Kiev and "do not correspond to Ukraine’s foreign policy concept," the envoy reserved Kiev’s right to offer its own interpretations of the document after it is signed.

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