In a document approved by the unrecognized Russian-speaking republic's Supreme Council, the lawmakers ask their Russian colleagues to initiate discussions on unblocking the region's foreign economic activity and rendering financial help to Russian nationals living in Transdnestr. Many in the Russia-leaning republic hold Russian passports.
"Under the conditions of permanent blockades and restrictions, the residents of Transdnestr are in point of fact deprived of the right to normal social and economic development," the document said.
Home to most of Moldova's heavy industry, Transdnestr broke away from Moldova in bloody conflicts of the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Moldova has been seeking to bring the separatist republic back under its control ever since.
Since March 2006, export-dependent Transdnestr has been under customs restrictions, which was imposed by neighboring Ukraine at Moldova's request, a move which Tiraspol called an economic blockade.
It has been a serious blow to the ex-Soviet region's struggling economy, causing a halt in deliveries of goods to Ukraine over the lack of an official Moldovan customs stamp.
The Transdnestr legislators said welfare laws granting benefits to such categories of residents as the disabled, orphans, pensioners, the poor, blood donors and social workers have ceased to be implemented in the region.
"Considering the shortage of budget revenues in January-February 2007, social funding is in a critical situation," the document says.
The lawmakers said that although a set of measures was being taken in search of internal reserves to stabilize the republic's economy, such measures could not lead to a drastic improvement without extra aid, given the continuing pressure on Transdnestr.
Russia, which has maintained a peacekeeping contingent in the region since the conflict, has not officially offered to incorporate the region, although is widely believed to support the breakaway regime.
Moscow has consistently compared the future of the region to the status of Kosovo, a Serbian region with a predominantly Albanian population that is seeking independence, and whose ultimate resolution Russia has said would become a precedent for the outcome of other frozen conflicts.
