Ministry of Foreign Affairs hosted a meeting between Minister Vitaly Ignatiev and the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Republic of Moldova, Margret Uebber. The diplomat had previously visited Pridnestrovie, this is the second and final visit in her current designation.
Welcoming the guest, Vitaly Ignatiev noted that Germany has traditionally played a pragmatic and constructive role in the Pridnestrovian settlement process. He recalled that during Germany’s OSCE Chairmanship in 2016, the parties had signed the “Berlin Protocol”, an important document that laid the foundation for several subsequent agreements between Tiraspol and Chisinau in areas such as land use, telecommunications, transportation, education, and environmental protection. The diplomat noted that Moldova currently does not implement many of these agreements.
“Today, the situation has changed. Unfortunately, we fail to cook a good diplomatic dish, because we only have one ingredient on the table: Pridnestrovie’s political will. We neither see any political will of Chisinau for a rational dialogue, nor do we see proactive proximity of the mediators and observers. All of this has led to a standstill of the dialogue,” Vitaly Ignatiev noted.
The PMR Foreign Minister added that, within the framework of the negotiation process, the experts of the sides had prepared a significant package of practical agreements. However, the Republic of Moldova is avoiding their signing. A draft agreement concerning the placement of unattended children, initialled by the working group experts, is among the unsigned documents.
The diplomat emphasized that dialogue is impossible without genuine political will from Chisinau, as it is the key factor.
Concluding the meeting, Vitaly Ignatiev stressed that, given the positive experience of mediation, international actors genuinely interested in stability and security should play a more active role in facilitating further negotiation process on the Dniester, aimed at protecting the interests of the people.
