Posted by Germany wants Russia to withdraw its forces from Transdnestr, a breakaway territory located between the Dniester River in eastern Moldova and Ukraine, in exchange for promoting Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s May 2008 initiative on drafting a European security pact, the paper’s sources say.
The EU would subsequently be willing to discuss this new continental security system with Moscow at a meeting of the new Russia-EU foreign and security policy committee.
European analysts and diplomats are still considering the Russian-German proposal to establish such a committee.
Alexander Rahr, Director of the Russia Eurasia Program at the German Council on Foreign Relations, said the June 5 memorandum, which President Medvedev and German Chancellor Angela Merkel signed at Merkel’s Meseberg Residence, 60 kilometers north of Berlin, could be interpreted as being the EU’s response to the Russian leader’s initiative for a new European security pact.
Rahr said Germany was essentially answering Russia on behalf of Europe, saying: “Let’s resolve the issue of the Russian troop withdrawal from Transdnestr because without it the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty cannot be implemented and it damages mutual trust in the Black Sea region, and then we can negotiate a common security system.”
The analyst thinks Moscow is unlikely to agree to this concession. “I am afraid that this proposal on establishing the committee will not get far,” Rahr said in conclusion. The June 5 memorandum only mentions the Transdnestr conflict.
Alina Inayeh, Director of the Black Sea Trust and the German Marshall Fund’s office in Bucharest, said the EU, and Germany in particular, support the establishment of a committee like this for several reasons.
“One key goal is settling the Transdnestr conflict by involving Russia in constructive cooperation and pressuring Transdnestr leaders to accept a compromise,” Inayeh said, adding that “Russian forces could either be withdrawn or subordinated to a common EU-Russia mandate.”
Konstantin Kosachev, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee at the Russian lower house of parliament, the State Duma, told the paper that Russia-EU relations currently lacked the mechanisms needed to minimize the human factor and prioritize strategic interests.
Supporting the committee’s establishment, Kosachev said that as the then president of France and of the EU it was up to Nicolas Sarkozy to mediate the August 2008 Russian-Georgian conflict over the breakaway province of South Ossetia, and that the situation could have developed differently if Estonia had the EU presidency at that time.
However, Kosachev declined to link Medvedev’s initiative on agreeing a European security pact with the Russian-German proposal to establish the Russia-EU security committee, adding that the latter was intended for practical crisis resolution and emergency peacekeeping missions.
Source: Nezavisimaya Gazeta
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