Posted on 10/31/2005 2:41:33 PM PST by HAL9000
The official Chisinau is in possession of documents indicating that weapons from Transnistria were supplied to Iraq, Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin stated to Russian journalists who are paying a 5-day-long working visit to this republic on the Moldovan leadership's invitation."We have sent to Russia a file with documents on the directions of arms exports from Transnistria. According to the data available with us, 13 Transnistrian industrial enterprises manufacture armaments continuously. We have a document from the Presidential Office of Saddam Hussein's certifying that weapons from Transnistria used to be imported to Iraq. Now we are scrutinizing this", Voronin said.
Asked why he refused to sign the Kozak Memorandum in November 2003, Voronin replied that on the evening preceding the signature day, the Memorandum unexpectedly came to have one new page: "This was a new document one page large containing one item saying that we sign the document stipulating that a Russian military base is being established [in Transnistria] for a 20-year term. We stated then that if that page is left in the Memorandum, the question of signing the document is cancelled".
The Moldovan President resolutely spoke for Russia's meeting its troop withdrawal commitments, and emphasized that Moldova regards the presence of the Russian armaments in Transnistria as Moscow's backing of the Tiraspol regime.
"The Transnistria problem remains unresolved between us. But it should not be an obstacle to relations between Moldova and Russia. Our centuries-long friendship with Russia is Moldova's chief heritage, and the Transnistrian regime mustn't hamper the relations between the two countries", stated the Moldovan leader.
In his words, Chisinau stands for resolving the Transnistria conflict by using exclusively peaceful means, and is not going to organize "velvet revolutions" in Transnistria. At the same time, Vladimir Voronin confirmed his refusal to conduct negotiations with Transnistrian leader Igor Smirnov and his regime.
"Smirnov's team was not simply involved in gangsterism. They have their hands steeped in blood. Peaceful settlement work should be done only by people with clean hands", stated Voronin, adding that he had ceased all talks with Smirnov yet 3 years ago.
Vladimir Voronin stated Moldova has drawn up a list of people who were in opposition to the Transnistrian leader Igor Smirnov and who are now missing.
In his words, Moldova, like the entire world community, shall not recognize the approaching December elections to the Transnistrian supreme soviet [parliament], but if a new leadership comes to power in Tiraspol, negotiations on settling the situation may be resumed. In Voronin's opinion, the most suitable personality for holding negotiations with Moldova may be Yevgeny Shevchook, the Transnistrian Deputy Speaker.
What sort of weapons?
Weren't you gonna take over Transnistria? Or was it Bosnia-Herznoslovivnia?
Pardon my ignorance but...
Where the hell is that country?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria
Eastern Moldava, bordering Ukraine. I had to look it up ;)
In December 2003, reports surfaced that Alazan rockets—originally developed by Soviet scientists to pre-empt hailstorms through a type of cloud seeding but later fitted with radioactive material—had disappeared from the sprawling weapons stockpiles of the Pridnestrovskaya Moldavskaya Respublika (or Transdniester Moldovan Republic), the separatist enclave better known as Transnistria that stretches along Moldova's eastern border with Ukraine.
LOL!
For a moment I was thinking of that country that Tom Hanks' character was from in "The Terminal".
On 8 May 2005, the London Times reported that an arms dealer in Bender, Transnistria, had offered to sell three Alazan rockets equipped with radioactive warheads to a Times reporter posing as the representative of an Algerian militant group.[1] [The Alazan was originally designed by Soviet scientists as a weather control rocket to prevent hail. After the weather control experiment failed, the rocket was later used for military purposes. It has a maximum length of 1.4 meters and range of 10 km.][
I know a guy in West Texas who has a grazing pasture with more square miles than that country.
just two weeks before the Times article, the Russian journal Politicheskiy zhurnal published an interview with Mikhail Bergman, former commandant of Russian military forces in Tiraspol, who said that in the mid-1990s the 14th Army discovered that two tactical weapons with “nuclear explosion imitators” as well as “nuclear suitcase” weapons had disappeared from storage areas in the region.
ping
Any information or thoughts on this?
The portion nearest the Black Sea became part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic; the rest became the Moldavian S.S.R. The official language, Moldavian, was Romanian written in the Cyrillic alphabet. Stalin attached a small strip of land east of the Dniester to the Moldavian S.S.R. When the Soviet Union broke up, that region didn't want to be part of independent Moldova. I think most of the population there is either Ukrainian or Russian.
I think Moldova as a whole is the poorest country in Europe, worse off than Albania or Belarus, but conditions may be even worse in the separatist region.
What was the official Soviet viewpoint on the ethnicity of the Moldavians or Moldovans?
(If you get that reference, you are either a woman over 50, a gay man over 30, or just a dork with too much time on his hands).
There's another group in the area, the Gagauz, who are Orthodox Christians but speak a language of the Turkish family. They are apparently found in Moldova, Romania, and Bulgaria...a fairly small group.
Moldova must not be confused with Moldava, the Spanish name for the Moldau or Vltava, the river which flows through Prague (as in Smetana's Die Moldau).
"I had to look it up ;)"
Thanks much! I hate not knowing that kind of stuff! Journalists who refer to places like that without explanation shoukd be fired.
Nice graphic with that explanation.
"There are no rules and order in that enclave."
I'm sure this is all part of Putin's benevelent plans for the region and the world. It only looks like the guy is a friggin gangster.
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