In today's session in Strasbourg MEPs are to analyze a bill on the continuous violation of human rights in Transdniestria and the need for EU's more complex participation in settling this frozen conflict in the respective region of the Moldovan Republic. This resolution project is an initiative authored by the MEPs from the Democrat Party together with Ovidiu Gant, a representative of the Democratic Forum of Germans in Romania and with support from the EPP-DE group. The initiative of Romanian officials in the latter group pursues to ask European institutions for more active participation in solutions to cases of disrespect for human rights, given the latest events when Tudor Petrov-Popa and Andrei Ivantoc were freed from prison, as well as the talks on and solution to the respective regional conflict. MEPs Marian-Jean Marinescu, Maria Petre, Roberta Anastase, Ovidiu Gant, Monica Iacob-Ridzi and Radu Tirle author the document. European Commission's participation in Transdniestria According to the project to be tackled in the Parliament of Europe today, the latter institution is asking both the Commission and the Council to consider measures for more active participation in talks and solutions to the Dniester conflict. The document is critical of the continuous deterioration of the state of human rights in Transdniestria and especially of the way Tudor Petrov-Popa and Andrei Ivantoc were imprisoned and freed. Authors insist on the need to provide a fast and final solution to the frozen conflict in order to establish democracy and respect for human rights in the entire Moldovan Republic, in keeping with international principles. The Parliament of Europe also pursues to ask the Commission, the Council and the Delegation to raise an issue such as the protection of human rights in Transdniestria during contacts with officials from the Moldovan Republic and the Russian Federation, in the context of the latter republic's aspiration to join the EU and of the relations between the EU and Russia. Withdrawal of Russian troops The resolution project is also going to ask that the OSCE conclusions reached in Istanbul in 1999 be applied so that the Russian troops in Transdniestria would withdraw. In the document there is reminded the serious violation of human rights in Transdniestria, continuing even at present, especially the denial of Romanians' rights by closing down schools teaching in Romania and by the profanation of a Romanian cemetery there. There is stated that the violation of the rights and political liberties of the entire population there leads to spreading flesh trafficking and organized crime.

George DAMIAN