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The President of Romania Traian Basescu is having a diplomatic tour in the Black Sea states, actually visiting 5 countries in 2 days: Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, the Moldovan Republic (all of them GUAM members) and Turkey (the second master of the Black Sea, after Russia).

The President has taken Transdniestria up from the very beginning, as a conflict is about to burst out like in Kosovo or South Ossetia. The frozen conflicts by the Black Sea have unfrozen all of a sudden and they have got hot. The officials of Romania and Ukraine are asking that the Russian 'peacekeeping' troops in South Ossetia should be replaced by the OSCE troops. Military ships belonging to the North Atlantic Alliance are heading the Black Sea. Turkey, a NATO member, may prevent the allied ships' access to the Bosphorus and Dardanelle Straits.

The Romanian President is to visit Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey today, after meeting with the Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko yesterday in Kiev and after talking to the Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin in Chishinau. President Basescu is also to talk to the Presidents of Azerbaijan and Georgia, as well as to the President and PM of Turkey.

Yesterday while in the capital of Ukraine after the meeting with President Yushchenko, the Romanian official claimed that in Transdniestria there were enough elements for a conflict just like in South Ossetia and Kosovo. The President mentioned that in the separatist region in the Eastern Moldovan Republic there was invoked "the mother states' so-called legitimacy to intervene to protect its citizens". According to President Basescu, the Ossetia conflict was a repetition of the Kosovo mechanism, which was perfectly ready in Transdniestria too, adding that in the latter region the political conditions weren't met, still the conflict could burst out any minute.

He added: "The events in Georgia have caught us unready and a repetition in a different region thought to be a frozen conflict is possible. Right now we have got no mechanism to prevent such conflicts from bursting out. Theoretically, a conflict can burst out in any of the regions where there is a frozen conflict." Before the meeting with the Ukrainian President, the head of state had argued that the Black Sea region could not be secured unless Moscow got involved "as a partner, not as a risk factor" at regional level.

International guarantees wanted

President Yushchenko emphasized the war in Georgia was due to the frozen conflict in the region, claiming that the events in Ossetia could get repeated in other regions with frozen conflicts, such as Abkhazia or Transdniestria, unless prevention measures were taken. The "Ukrainski Novini", a daily in Kiev, is reporting that the Ukrainian President wants international guarantees for Ukraine's territorial integrity, under the influence of the Russian military aggression against Georgia. (...)

Things are calm in Transdniestria

The ongoing crisis in Georgia has made the official discourse of the separatist leaders in Tyraspol hotter, but so far it hasn't led to the mobilization of the impressing military sources there.

Groups of Cossack volunteers have left for the Ossetia front, but our sources claim things were calm in Tyraspol yesterday. The officials of the separatist regime in power have criticized the Moldovan Republic's approach to the Georgian crisis, announcing the suspension of all the official contracts between Chishinau and Tyraspol till the Moldovan authorities express opposition to the "Georgian military aggression" against South Ossetia.

Mihai ISAC

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