At the request of the media for clarification of the position of the Pridnestrovian side on a number of statements concerning the Pridnestrovian settlement, the Presidential Press Service reports the following.
There are already more than twenty years of negotiations on the Pridnestrovian settlement which is based on the universally recognized norms and principles of international law and on taking into account the experience of conflict resolution in other parts of the world, what follows directly from the provisions of the Statement of the leaders of Moldova and Pridnestrovie on 28 April 1994. The fundamental basis of this process is the consistency, continuity and commitment to the obligations. The search for a settlement formula, according to the Press Service of the President of the PMR, is possible only under conditions of mutually respectful compromise, which is inconsistent with the policy of pressure, blocking the economic potential of Pridnestrovie, leading to the expansion of poverty and grow of social tensions in the conflict region.
Actions aimed at strengthening the economic blockade of Pridnestrovie, concentration of units of the Armed Forces and the National Guard of Ukraine on the border with the republic, blocking movement of citizens of Pridnestrovie across the Pridnestrovian-Ukrainian border are unfriendly and in the Pridnestrovian side’s view, are contrary to the purposes and objectives of the Pridnestrovian settlement and the negotiation process in the format of the “Permanent Conference…” (5 + 2), in which Ukraine is a guarantor country and mediator.
In particular, the signatures of the Presidents of the Russian Federation, the Republic of Moldova, Pridnestrovie and Ukraine are under one of the fundamental documents of the negotiation process, which is an international treaty deposited by the OSCE, enshrining the agreement between the parties of the conflict “to continue the formation of state-legal relations between them” (Moscow Memorandum of 1997).
Recent alarms related regarding the basis of the Pridnestrovian settlement in the current difficult conditions can damage the fragile mechanisms for interaction and thus set the negotiations back for decades, that in this case may indicate a change in the positions of some participants in the negotiation process, and that they revise the basic principles of the settlement, as well as their status in the process.
Pridnestrovie still proceeds from the need to conduct a consistent, responsible dialogue in a constructive way and on the basis of mutual respect, to search for compromises which are based on the will of the people. Since the resumption of official work of the negotiation process in late 2011 up to this day, the Pridnestrovian side continues to work actively, making many times more substantive initiatives than our partners, and expects positive steps, careful attention to the earlier commitments from all participants in the negotiation process and urges to avoid impetus of high tension.
