Participants in the last plenary session of the 24th meeting of the OSCE Ministerial Council, held in Vienna today, adopted a string of decisions and documents, including a Declaration on the five-plus-two negotiations in the Transnistrian settlement process, the Reintegration Policies Bureau has reported.   

The document reaffirms the firm position of the states participating in OSCE to identify a comprehensive, peaceful and lasting solution to the Transnistrian conflict, based in the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Moldova, in its internationally recognized borders, with determining a special status for the Transnistrian region, able to guarantee the inalienable political, economic and social rights of the residents from Moldova’s eastern districts.

The Ministerial Council highly appreciates the substantial achievements recorded by the sides during 2017, especially as regards the five priority subjects (apostillization of education documents; work of the Latin-script schools; interaction in the telecommunications sector; tilling farmlands from the Dubasari district; opening of a bridge between the Gura Bacului and Bacioc villages), as well as welcomes the agreements officialized in the protocol of an official meeting in the five-plus-two format of negotiations, held in Vienna on 27-28 November 2017 and the sides’ commitment to identify solutions also to other problems on the agenda of the process of talks.

The Declaration welcomes the sides’ political will and willingness to solve the problems which have not been settled for a long time, urges the sides to show themselves pro-active also during the mandate of Italy’s OSCE chairmanship, exercised in the 2018 year, as well as an appeal is launched to continue the work in all the current platforms of dialogue, in order to achieve palpable results on all the three baskets of the agenda agreed upon: a) social and economic issues; b) general law, humanitarian and human rights aspects; c) comprehensive settlement of the conflict, including institutional, political and security aspects.

Also, the Declaration stresses the importance of the Permanent Conference on Political Issues in the Transnistrian Settlement Process (five-plus-two format of negotiations) in the promotion of a comprehensive and sustainable solution to the conflict and encourages the mediators and observers to continue the coordination of efforts and fully use the potential needed to advance the settlement process.

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