The Press and Information Board of the Russian Foreign Ministry has circulated a commentary on the disgruntlement voiced by the Moldovan leadership in the interview to the Free Europe radio station over the activities of the peacekeeping force and intermediaries in the Transdnestrian settlement.
"In conditions when both the conflicting sides lack political will for compromise, none can work out mutually acceptable steps for emerging from the deadlock", the board's communique reads.
"Responsibility for it lies with Cisinau in no less degree than with Tiraspol (capital of the Dniester left-bank territory with Russian-speaking population. In the early 1990s, it withdrew from Cisinau's jurisdiction and called itself the Transdnestrian Moldovan Republic). Especially now that confrontation is developing through the toughening of Moldova-imposed unilateral economic sanctions, attempts at blocking the economic complex of the Transdnestrian region", the Foreign Ministry believes.
"It is a departure from the earlier agreements on the normalisation of relations and away from the movement towards the common economic environment in the territory of the Republic of Moldova. The socio-economic collapse may have an impact on hundreds of thousands of ordinary people, among who are many of our compatriots, Russian nationals (many people in the Transdnestrian Moldovan Republic have in their time got passports of Russia as the successor of the former USSR)", the ministerial communique reads.
"The whipping up of emotions, alienation and the search for pretexts for removing the opponent from the talks will hardly be helpful", it goes on to read.
"Moscow is concerned over the stalling of the negotiating process on the Transdnestrian settlement, in which Russia together with Ukraine and the OSCE invariably act as a conscientious, unbiased go-between and a participant in the international peacekeeping operation, of which the Moldovan forces are a part", the Russian Foreign Ministry notes.
"Russia, is close interaction with other intermediaries, is going to continue work rehabilitating the settlement process in the five-side format, attain its transition to the path of resolving practical questions, eliminate risks of destabilisation and gradually return the parties towards the road of elaborating a comprehensive solution for the problem", the communique reads.
"It is thanks to our efforts that last autumn the parties were close to reaching an agreement. However, it has been wrecked which, as is known, is not our fault. The international community, representatives of the leading European security structures fully share the understanding of the lack of alternative to dialogue", the Russian Foreign Ministry declares.
