The Moldovan delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has demanded during the spring term for a moratorium on the Chishinau-Bucharest relations. The Pro-Russian Communist officials of the ex Soviet Republic are trying to influence Bucharest authorities' decisions on the Romanian ethnics in the Moldovan Republic and Ukraine, just as they are carefully coordinating their activity with the action of the separatist regime in Tyraspol and of the orange government in Kiev. In the context of institutional aggression against the legitimate interests of the Romanians in Basarabia and Ukraine, Igor Smirnov, 'a President of Transdniestria', has provided the international community with a project on "A Friendship and Collaboration Agreement between the Moldovan Republic and the Moldovan Dniester Republic", published in the separatist periodical "The Dniester Truth". The first article stipulates that the final borders between "the two equal states" consist in the armistice line and the Russian Federation is to guarantee for the borders. This is how the Transdniester separatist authorities pursue to make legal the presence of the Russian military troops and of the huge pro-Russia paramilitary forces in the region. The fourth article of the 'Agreement' allows Tyraspol to negotiate on the border with Ukraine, with no involvement of Chishinau or of international organizations. Treaty war Vladimir Ogrizko, a foreign minister in Kiev, has been supporting the recent initiatives of the Communist officials in Chishinau, who have imperatively demanded Bucharest officials to sign a treaty by which Romania should recognize the Prut River border. In a recent interview published by the Zerkalo Nedeli, the foreign minister in Kiev has complained that "not everyone in Romania is for the idea of signing a basic and border Moldovan -Romanian treaty". According to the Ukrainian official, "Ukraine thinks the Moldovan Republic is an independent and sovereign state", despite territory disputes. Minister Ogrizko has also mentioned that the two ex Soviet states have already delimited two thirds of their common border and that Kiev would like it to be completed fast to its own benefit. Ukraine occupies the Moldovan Republic The minister has added: "Ukraine will sign a treaty on the state border with the Moldovan Republic and this will be the end of the border delimitation story once and for all." Ignoring Kiev's ceasaless pressure on Chishinau, Ukraine would be a beneficiary of substantial corrections in southern Basarabia, more exactly in Palanca and Basarabeasca, as well as in the region of the artificial lake in Cuciurgani. Ukraine is involved in serious territory disputes against most neighbors. The Russian President Vladimir Putin has recently mentioned in Bucharest that the Russians make a third of the population in Ukraine and that there are whole regions inhabited only by Russians. The Russian President has emphasized as well: " Within its present borders, Ukraine emerged in the Soviet era. After WW II, it got territories from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania. Ukraine has nowadays got unsettled transborder difficulties with Romania. Not last, Ukraine got huge territories from Russia in the east and the south." The issue of the territories illegally occupied by Ukraine reaches public opinion in Romania, Poland, Slovakia or the Russian Federation regularly, as Kiev officials' aggressive policy is intensifying pressure on the governments of neigbour states, asked to settled the matter. The statement on Transdniestria and the south of the Moldovan Republic the President of Romania Traian Basescu has recently made has irritated Kiev officials, although not pointing to Ukraine officials: "In Ukraine there are enough, not officials, who talk about a Transdniestria that should go to Ukraine. But they forget to talk about southern Ukraine that should go to the Moldovan Republic."

Mihai ISAAC