EU ‘set to give OK’ to monitors in Transdniester

By Andrew Beatty

Date: 23/06/05

Calls for the EU to deploy monitors to the Ukraine-Moldova border are likely to receive a positive response, according to the Union's envoy to Moldova.

Adriaan Jacobovits de Szeged, the recently appointed EU envoy to Moldova, said: "The answer I can guess will be in the positive, as of course the EU is very interested in transparency on that border."

During a visit to Brussels earlier this month Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin presented the EU with a letter, co-signed by Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, asking for monitors to be sent to the border between Ukraine and the breakaway Moldovan region of Transdniester.

Jacobovits said that he hoped for an EU response before the summer break in August.

The 450-kilometre Transdniesterian section of the Ukraine-Moldova border, which has become a major route for smugglers, is currently under the control of the Transdniesterian authorities.

According to the International Crisis Group, illicit economic activities "keep Transdniester afloat". The EU is eager to tighten border control before 2007, when Romania, which has strong cultural ties with Moldova, is expected to join the EU.

Jacobovits said that the mandate of any future mission to the Ukraine-Moldova border should allow "effective border control, that you cannot just watch how many containers are going through, but that you could also ask to open this or that container. That you would have an opportunity to see what is inside, what is actually going through the border".

"The purpose is that it would be an effective international border control, but the border checks themselves are of course being done by customs officials of the country concerned," said Jacobovits.

He indicated that observation of the 939km-long frontier between Ukraine and Moldova could be possible.

The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe has estimated that a monitoring mission would need between 20-80 personnel. Jacobovits also raised the prospect of EU involvement in a peace stabilisation force inside Transdniester to replace Russian troops that have been stationed there since 1992.

So far Russia has refused to withdraw its forces, but a new Moldovan proposal could see increased pressure to renew talks on troop withdrawals and a replacement force.

"I have a feeling that the Russians are prepared to talk about that, we will certainly have to consider it as part of a settlement. In the end the whole settlement should also contain a part on civilian and military observers in an interim period," Jacobovits said.