EU eyes controversial peace mission to strife-torn Moldova

Date:17/07/03

By Dana Spinant

THE European Union may launch a controversial third peacekeeping operation next year, as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) hinted the EU should deploy troops to Moldova, to help stabilize one of Europe's poorest regions.

Such an operation would test the Union's relations with Russia and Ukraine, which have a strategic interest in the former Soviet republic, currently a vipers' nest of ethnic tensions.

One EU diplomat told European Voice that any operation should be launched in cooperation with Russia, which has 2,000 troops on the spot, the so-called 14th army.

Moldova - dogged by clashes between ethnic Russians and Moldovans in the secessionist Trans-Dniester region that have left 2,000 dead since the beginning of the 1990s - is a hub of organized crime and human trafficking, right on the EU's doorstep.

Representatives of member states to Brussels will debate a possible Moldova mission on Tuesday (22 July), but a decision is not expected before the end of the year.

However, EU diplomats discussed the idea with NATO officials on 16 July. According to one diplomat present, the Alliance would agree with such a mission and will probably lend the EU the military assets needed. The meeting also showed that "the Alliance is not likely to undertake the operation itself, as ... Washington is not interested, but would let the Europeans do it", he said.

The biggest obstacle to clear before the mission is given the green light concerns Russia. Maurizio Melani, Italian ambassador on the EU's Political and Security Committee, admitted after the talks with NATO that Moscow has "an interest and a stake in the country". But a colleague warned that "Russia has even more than that: it has an army there".

Consequently, EU diplomats say one likely scenario, if an operation is launched, is "to undertake it jointly with Russia".

This would make sense, adds one, as the mission would be launched under an OSCE mandate, and Russia is an OSCE member.

"A few hundred soldiers from the 14th army should stay there to work with the Union's troops: that could also diminish the hostility of secessionist ethnic Russians."

A spokesman for the Russian embassy to the EU declined to comment on this, saying his country's authorities have not been approached either by the OSCE or the Union with such a proposal. A Ukrainian diplomat confirmed Kyiv was following the discussion "with maximum interest".

A Council of Ministers' official told this newspaper that a decision on any mission to Moldova will be more complicated than sending troops to Macedonia, where the EU's first peacekeeping operation is under way. "Large countries have strategic interests there," he said. "Russia, Ukraine, and Romania will have to be consulted."

Moldova shares a strong cultural and linguistic identity with Romania - of which it was a part until 1939.

But the Council official insisted that "the EU too has a direct interest in Moldova", which will border the Union's territory after Romania's accession, planned for 2007.

"As [EU foreign policy chief Javier] Solana's security [strategy] document says, the EU must create a security zone around its borders."

The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has hinted that the EU should deply a peacekeeping force to Moldova.