European Union is on Guard, and Moldova Should Be, Too
The EU Observer published an interesting article on Moldova's role in the EU-Russia tensions. EU special envoy to Moldova, Kalman Mizsei, thinks that there are two scenarios for solving the Transnistrian problem: positive and negative - both with high stakes for EU and Russia. This means that EU keeps a strict eye on what's going on in Moldova in terms of Transnistrian conflict resolution, and will criticize, if not punish, any deviations from the "5+2" format of negotiations.
Today, an important event is taking place in Vienna: “Extraordinary Conference of the States Parties to the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe” (CFE), which was convened in short notice by Moscow. This event might have interesting outcomes, including for Moldova, about which Vladimir Socor writes in this article. There are 3 main groups of players. Russia is trying to persuade US and EU to waive the Istanbul convention requirement to withdraw its troops from the conflict zones (in Moldova and Georgia): Through shrill rhetoric and a little German help, Moscow hopes to break the Western policy of linking ratification of the adapted CFE Treaty with Russia’s fulfillment of the Istanbul Commitments, primarily on Moldova.
The NATO allies' proposal is "to accept a small number of Russian troops remaining in Moldova as part of an internationalized peacekeeping operation for a limited period of time. Russia would evacuate or scrap its ammunition stockpiles as well as withdrawing part of its troops. The internationalized operation would be a military one, though potentially reformable into an operation with greater civilian content later on."
And, finally, the official Moldovan delegation, in addition to internationalization, is to advance the idea of “civilianization” of the peacekeeping operation, which implies "turning the Russian military operation into an international mission of civilian and military observers, with some small military backup, under an international mandate."
The event will last until 15th of June, and the actual outcomes would be of great interest.
Later addition: "Moldova is key to this whole dispute between Russia and NATO," says an alliance diplomat. "If we can resolve the Moldova issue, the rest could fall into place." More on this issue here
Comments:
Here is a bit on what is going on in Viena
Last night during a post-electoral discussion on Euro-TV I learned that both Moldovan and Russian delegations accepted to discuss the internationalization of the peacekeeping mission in Transnistria under the OSCE mandate, which is a little different from a genuine internationalization, involving American and EU troops.
However, in this article this nuance is not mentioned at all.
Moldova in the News blog offers a very good summary on the results of the Vienna event here.
Stratfor charges for its articles, so I tried to put as many relevant quotes as possible. I have the original article, but obviously I can't just put it on my blog :). However, if anyone's interested in it, just contact me...