On March 25, 2011, a meeting took place in the PMR's MFA between leadership of the foreign policy department of the PMR with Director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia of the UK FCO, Laurie Bristow, and Ambassador of UK to Moldova, Keith Shannon. The meeting was also attended by deputy head of the British Embassy, John Mitchell, and political consultant of the British Embassy, Yulia Kirnitski.
From the Pridnestrovien side, involved in the meeting were Foreign Minister Vladimir Yastrebchak and Deputies Foreign Minister Sergey Simonenko and Vitaly Ignatiev.
The discussion was mainly focused on issues related to contemporary situation in the Moldova-Pridnestrovie relations.
In the course of the conversation, Vladimir Yastrebchak marked that despite diametrically opposite stances of Pridnestrovie and Moldova, specific issues in the sphere of economy, transport, human rights and contacts of the citizens must be settled jointly, by adoption of agreed and binding decisions. To cite an example, the Minister mentioned situation with approval of procedural rules of the work of expert (working) groups of the sides which were agreed with previous political representative of the RM V. Osipov and which are now revised on the initiative of Moldova's current political representative Ye. Karpov.
Answering the question about the possibility of facilitating the settlement on the part of international actors, the head of the foreign policy department specified that fundamentally important is to create environment for political interaction between Moldova and Pridnestrovie on equal basis in accordance with internationally fixed status of the RM and PMR as “sides to the conflict”.
During the meeting, interlocutors exchanged views on a range of other topical issues.
The Minister acceded to the viewpoint of foreign diplomats about high international interest towards Pridnestrovien problematics and thanked guests for their aspiration to receive trustworthy information at first hand.
Closing the meeting, interlocutors highly estimated the meaningful part of the dialogue and agreed to continue substantive discussions in bilateral format.
