Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both in Georgia, and Transdnestr in Moldova, proclaimed their independence following the break-up of the Soviet Union, but the international community has never recognized them as sovereign states.
Moscow has supported the regions' bids for independence, and Russian forces have been stationed in the conflict zones as part of international peacekeeping forces since the bloody conflicts that followed the secessionist declarations.
The joint peacekeeping forces that the self-proclaimed republics decided to form last summer have begun training together to deal with potential emergency situations, Transdnestr's Foreign Minister Valery Litskai said.
"There has been speculation about what will happen if Russian peacekeepers withdraw from the conflict zones, and we answer that there will be no vacuum, because we have normal peacekeeping forces that will be sent to one or another region as needed," the minister said.
He said that it would take about a year to fine-tune cooperation, and that the forces would act in compliance with the principles of UN peacekeeping forces.
The leaders also agreed to establish a common information agency to cover the situation in the three provinces. It will be located in Moscow and will have bureaus in the republics' capitals. The community of the three republics opened its Web site two months ago.
The parties agreed to hold a meeting in Sukhumi, the capital of Abkhazia, in the near future. Litskai said further steps will depend on a decision that will be made on the status of Kosovo, a separatist region in Serbia with a predominantly Albanian population.
