MOSCOW, March 10 (RIA Novosti) - New customs regulations requiring that all goods entering Ukraine from Transdnestr have an official Moldovan stamp could lead to a humanitarian disaster in the breakaway Moldovan region, Russia's lower house of parliament said Friday in a statement.
Moldova's parliament Friday blamed Transdnestr for escalating tensions in the region, and criticized Russia for reacting inadequately to the current situation.
Russia's State Duma said the Ukrainian decision, made at Chisinau's request, would seriously damage the Transdnestrian economy. What Chisinau and Kiev are trying to present as an effort to put the border in order "means nothing less than the imposition of economic sanctions on Transdnestr in order to force it to surrender to possible solutions to the problem that actually breach the republic's right to a special status as stipulated by international agreements," the Duma statement said.
Russian parliamentarians said the decision had damaged the Transdnestr settlement by fuelling political tensions around the issue. They also called for Ukraine and Moldova to lift the new regulations and launch talks immediately, as stipulated in a memorandum of 1997.
A declaration from the Moldovan parliament described the situation in the region as "dangerous," and claimed that the breakaway region is "deliberately blocking any productive steps taken by Moldova and other participants of the negotiation process aimed at finding a peaceful and final resolution of the Transdnestr conflict."
The parliament also expressed disappointment that Russia, as an important part of negotiation process, had not given an adequate response.
"Some political forces in Moscow and certain Russian politicians are supporting Tiraspol separatists, who are obsessed with the idea of breaking Transdnestr from the Republic of Moldova," the declaration said.
The new regulations, which came into effect on March 3, were outlined in a joint communique adopted by the prime ministers of Ukraine and Moldova on December 30, 2005, and endorsed by the Ukrainian Cabinet in a March 1 decree.
Transdnestr's status has been a bone of contention since armed conflict broke out there in March 1992, when Moldova declared its independence from the Soviet Union and Transdnestr in turn proclaimed itself a republic. Russia intervened in the conflict at the Moldovan president's request, and the Russian and Moldovan presidents signed a ceasefire agreement in the presence of the leader of Transdnestr in July 1992.
In 1997 the presidents of Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and Transdnestr signed a memorandum on the normalization of relations between Moldova and Transdnestr outlining basic principles for the settlement in the region. The memorandum stipulates a special status for Transdnestr within Moldova. Both sides pledged not to use force, but to negotiate agreements with Russia and Ukraine as guarantors with the assistance of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), an association of former Soviet republics.
A Russian delegation recently visited Transdnestr to investigate the impasse over the new customs regulations. Foreign Ministry official Valery Kenyaikin, who headed the delegation, said that the customs technicalities had transformed into a political crisis with possible dire consequences.
Transdnestr leader Igor Smirnov said after the visit that the republic hoped to continue negotiations on its status.
"It is better to conduct talks than to conduct economic wars, or, God forbid, military actions," he said. "We will always talk about normalization of relations [with Moldova], no matter what goals Moldova is pursuing."
In a separate development, Transdnestr's economics minister, Yelena Chernenko, said Friday that losses sustained by the region due to the new rules in the week from March 3 to March 9 came to $20.2 million. She insisted that the 1997 memorandum, which stipulates the region's economic independence, be adhered to.
