Today, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the PMR Vladimir Yastrebchak met with Ambassador-at-Large of the MFA of the Russian Federation Sergey Gubarev. Participating in the meeting, which took place in the foreign office of Pridnestrovie, were also from the Russian side - co-Chairperson of the Joint Control Commission from RF Sergey Gorlov, and from the Pridnestrovien side – Deputy Foreign Minister of the PMR Alexander Malyarchuk.
The participants of the meeting reviewed the current situation which has established in relations between Tiraspol and Kishinev, and exchanged views on the perspectives of stepping-up the dialogue between the sides.
In his comments on the results of the meeting, Sergey Gubarev reminded that on June 21, 2001, a regular round of informal consultations on the Moldova-Pridnestrovie settlement in the 5+2 format had begun its work in Moscow. However, because of the disagreements which had emerged in the course of the given round, the participants of the meeting agreed to take a break and resume the work of the Moscow round this autumn. “We hope that it will take place in September, however, at this point it is hard to settle the date,” the Ambassador-at-Large of the Russian MFA told.
As Sergey Gubarev told, at the beginning of August he visited Kishinev where he heard position of the Moldovan side on issues of the resumption of consultations out of the mouth of official representatives of RM. Today the Russian diplomat raised the same question in Tiraspol. “We discussed what we can do for the Moscow meeting to bring real positive results,” Sergey Gubarev told.
Responding to the questions of journalists, the Russian diplomat was restrained enough when assessing the possibility of rapprochement of Tiraspol and Kishinev in the near future. “So far, it is not easy to make them come to a common denominator. But this is what we are working at, so that in the end everyone would reach a common understanding of, firstly, the very term “settlement” and, secondly, of the ways to lead to this settlement. By now, for me, for example, it is absolutely evident that on either bank this word is understood in very different ways,” Ambassador-at-Large of Russian MFA told.
Speaking about the possibility for the officialization of the consultations in the 5+2 format, he took notice of the fact that Moscow “is ready to press this point, of course, within reasonable limits.” “We pursue this activity indeed for the sake of a result rather than process. Unfortunately, it is somewhat difficult to get practical result within informal format. We have no corresponding instrument available. And it is official negotiations that are seen as such instrument,” the Russian diplomat believes. “It's another matter that there is a great deal of collateral issues that one needs to settle in a parallel way and prior to renewal of these negotiations. For example, to get clear understanding of the principles of carrying out negotiations, of agenda, hierarchy of issues which are to be discussed.”
According to PMR's Minister of Foreign Affairs Vladimir Yastrebchak, “it is exactly in this context that the Pridnestrovien side is also ready to insist upon resumption of the 5+2 official work. However, as the Minister noted, this should be done in such a way that the process would bring results. “Without elimination of existing barriers, without formulation of a clear agenda, without specification of precise game rules, including the principles of carrying out a dialogue – without all these components it will be very difficult for us to speak about prospects for renewal of the official work of the 5+2 format,” the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the PMR told.
Summing up the meeting, he told that on the part of the Russian side a fruitful exchange of opinions took place “regarding the fact what has changed in the period from 21st June and what we have today.” In the words of the head of the Pridnestrovien MFA, during this period the Pridnestrovien side carried out active work with both the Moldovan partners and representatives of the mediators and guarantors in order to charge consultations scheduled for September with real content. At the same time, he refrained from assessing the degree of participants' readiness for the Moscow round. “We still have time to see practical results that would be indicative of a real readiness of our partners for a fruitful work in different formats,” Vladimir Yastrebchak told.
