The venue has been appointed in Tiraspol, capital of the Transdniestrian Moldovan Republic, self-proclaimed entity along the Dniester left bank, which left Chisinau's jurisdiction early in the 1990s. Russians dominate its multiethnic population.
Last June's round had a 3 + 1 pattern, with Transdniestrian spokesmen conspicuously absent. Unlike it, the current session took start with complete representation-plenipotentiaries of Chisinau and Tiraspol, and Russia, Ukraine and the OSCE as international mediators.
Meanwhile, Transdniestrian tensions are coming to an edge with a controversy involving local secondary schools with Moldovan for tuition language, and Roman lettering. Republican authorities are out to close such schools, and the issue may come up on the session agenda alongside debates on Moldovan and Transdniestrian initiatives for a final settlement document, says William Hill, head of the OSCE Moldovan office.
The tensions hamper negotiations, he pointed out. Nevertheless, the diplomat does not think the problem defies solution, if only all involved parties are ready to meet each other halfway. Moldovan-language schools worked out their regulations last year, and it will take a mere several days to amend them so as to make school registration possible in the republic, pointed out the functionary of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Igor Smirnov, unrecognized Transdniestria's president, has chosen to refer to such schools as "Romanian". He met in conference yesterday with Valery Nesterushkin, Russia's envoy plenipotentiary to the negotiations. "Romanian schools may work in Transdniestria only within its constitutional limits-they have to be registered and evaluated according to our own standards," warned Mr. Smirnov.
The session will go on in Chisinau tomorrow.
President Vladimir Voronin of Moldova came up with a warning of his own: economic sanctions may start against Transdniestria unless its bosses expressly allow the population to be educated in its mother tongue, with August 1 for deadline.
An agreement of July 21, 1992, on the peaceful settlement principles of the Transdniestrian armed conflict, and other acting understandings envisage free travel and safety zone developments normalized. So Moldova's current demands mean to guarantee close compliance with the agreement, President Voronin stressed to an enlarged-attendance session of Moldova's Supreme Security Council today.
All available tools of the Transdniestrian settlement are receding before the separatist administration, with its unilateral moves. That's what is on in the area, he said emphatically.
Transdniestria's administration torpedoed, one by one, all settlement initiatives made by Chisinau and the mediators. Now, it has come over to direct confrontation and blatant coercion, Vladimir Voronin went on.
Today as never before, the developments direly demand dynamic international intervention to put an urgent end to a humanitarian disaster in Moldova's Transdniestrian area, said the president.
