TRANSDNESTR VOTERS BACK UNION WITH RUSSIA
By Nabi Abdullaev – Staff Writer
Gleb Garanich / Reuters
The Moscow Times
Tuesday, September 19, 2006. Issue 3500. Page 1.
Election official Pyotr Denisenko announcing the referendum results
Sunday.
The vast majority of voters in Moldova’s separatist province of
Transdnestr on Sunday backed independence and eventual unification
with Russia.
More than 97 percent of registered voters supported independence,
according to Transdnestr officials.
About 300,000 voters, or nearly 79 percent of those who are registered,
showed up at the polls.
Only Georgia’s breakaway province of Abkhazia, which held its own
independence vote in 1999, has recognized the referendum.
Still, the vote was a victory for the Kremlin as it seeks to expand
its influence in the former Soviet republics.
"The referendum demonstrated that our society is united in its desire
to become part of Russia," said Svetlana Antonova, Transdnestr’s
deputy information minister. Antonova spoke by telephone from the
province’s capital of Tiraspol.
Officials in the Moldovan capital of Chisinau and at the European
Union dismissed the referendum. But Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
praised it, calling the vote "democratic and open."
Lavrov noted that hundreds of monitors from former Soviet republics
and Europe observed the referendum.
"They could watch the people’s will," he said.
But Lavrov’s ministry was reluctant to go too far, refraining from
officially acknowledging the controversial vote and commenting on
its results.
Russia earlier pledged to respect Moldova’s territorial integrity.
In Chisinau, meanwhile, Natalya Vishanu, a spokeswoman for Moldovan
President Vladimir Voronin, said in an interview: "We don’t consider
it a referendum, and we don’t accept its outcome."
The Moldovan government issued a statement Monday saying the referendum
sought to "torpedo" Moldovan unification talks and called on other
countries not to acknowledge the vote.
The European Council and the Organization for Security and Cooperation
in Europe, the continent’s premier human-rights groups, and the EU
also refused to recognize the referendum.
None of this appears to be deterring Transdnestr leaders from taking
steps to integrate with Russia.
Transdnestr leader Igor Smirnov said Monday that the province’s
authorities would begin changing the legal code to make it conform
to Russian legislation. He said government bureaucracies would be
reconfigured in the image of Russian ministries and state agencies.
Transdnestr also wants the Russian ruble be the province’s only
official currency, Smirnov said.
The entire integration process is expected to take from five to seven
years, said Valery Litskai, the province’s foreign minister.
"If anyone thinks that Russia is going to acknowledge the referendum,
and that tomorrow everyone in Transdnestr will be granted Russian
citizenship, and Transdnestr will become an integral part of Russia,
I’d have to say this isn’t going to happen," Litskai said, Interfax
reported.
Transdnestr seceded from Moldova in 1990, as the Soviet Union was still
in the midst of collapsing. A short but bitter war ensued in 1992,
with hundreds killed on both sides. Transdnestr’s population is roughly
equally divided between ethnic Moldovans, Russians and Ukrainians.
Like the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, bordered by Poland, Lithuania
and the Baltic Sea, Transdnestr, which is surrounded by Moldova and
Ukraine, would stand apart from the rest of Russia were it to become
part of the country.
Sunday’s vote strengthens Russia’s hand insofar as other unrecognized
states in the former Soviet Union are concerned, officials and
analysts from Russia and Transdnestr said. All those unrecognized
states, most of which are in the Caucasus, are Russia-leaning.
While Western governments have backed independence for Kosovo and
Montenegro, they have refused to recognize similar bids in Transdnestr;
Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in Georgia; and the Nagorno-Karabakh
republic, claimed by Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Sergei Markov, a Kremlin-connected political analyst, said the Kremlin
would seek to leverage Western support for Kosovo’s independence into
Russian recognition of Transdnestr and South Ossetia.
Antonova, the Transdnestr deputy information minister, acknowledged
the referendum’s timing was meant to help Russia.
In recent years, Moldova, Georgia and Azerbaijan have been drifting
out of Moscow’s orbit as they seek closer ties with the West.
"The results of the referendum were predictable, and although they
will not have any real legal consequences related to joining Russia,
nevertheless, this is a signal to the international community that
cannot be ignored," said Vadim Gustov, head of the Federation Council’s
Committee for CIS Affairs, Interfax reported.
Gustov’s colleagues in the Federation Council and the State Duma voiced
similar views. Duma Deputies Sergei Baburin and Viktor Alksnis went
so far as to propose that Russian authorities establish an official
process for eventually recognizing Transdnestr’s independence.
The bloc of former Soviet republics known as GUAM — Georgia, Ukraine,
Azerbaijan and Moldova — last week managed to insert an item on the
United Nations General Assembly agenda dealing with the so-called
frozen conflicts in Georgia, Moldova and Nagorno-Karabakh.
The Georgian diplomats who spearheaded the move called it a sign of
GUAM’s successful foreign policy, while Lavrov downplayed the inclusion
of the frozen conflicts on the General Assembly’s agenda. Lavrov
noted that 16 member-states voted for inclusion, 15 were against it,
and 65 abstained.
The General Assembly’s 61st session began last week and will run
until mid-September 2007. It was not immediately clear when the frozen
conflicts item would be dealt with by the General Assembly.