I seem to have a fetish with separatist conflicts this week, but it’s not coincidence that plans for peaceful settlement are popping up all around the same time. This is because the GUAM alliance countries are working together to reunite their respective countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union left a little fragmented. Today, Moldova is making progress with the plan outlined by President Yushchenko of Ukraine (outlined here, read this first). It seems that the leader of Transdniester, despite political grandstanding by parliamentarians on both sides, has showed interested in moving forward with the plan.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko met in Ukraine on 14 July with Igor Smirnov, the leader of Moldova’s breakaway region of Transdniester. According to the Ukrainian president’s official website, Smirnov agreed to cooperate with Kyiv in implementing the plan that Yushchenko proposed in April aimed at settling the Transdniester conflict, which has been simmering between Chisinau and Tiraspol since a war between the two sides in 1992.

Prague, 15 July 2005 (RFE/RL) — The Yushchenko plan sets its main objective as the peaceful and democratic reintegration of Moldova within the borders of the Moldovan Soviet republic as of 1 January 1990.

The entire territory would fall under the constitutional system of the Republic of Moldova, but the separatist region of Transdniester would be granted “special status.”

Yushchenko and Smirnov also agreed yesterday to invite representatives of the EU and the United States to take part in negotiations between Chisinau and Tiraspol, which has so far been brokered by Russia, Ukraine, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Both politicians also decided to set up a working group to formulate criteria for democratizing Transdniester and ensure a transparent electoral process there.

However, the Yushchenko-Smirnov agreement may be not enough to ensure that Chisinau and Tiraspol start talking about practical steps to implement the plan. A Moldovan delegation to a session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE in Washington on 1-5 July staged a walkout in protest against an adopted resolution on the Transdniester conflict settlement. The delegation reportedly demanded that the Tiraspol administration be referred to in the resolution as “separatist” and “criminal.”

Ukraine’s prominent role in brokering a deal between Chisinau and Tiraspol is obviously a consequence of Kyiv’s vigorous pro-European policies that followed the 2004 Orange Revolution and the installation of Yushchenko as president.

But Kyiv is also keenly interested in the fate of some 200,000 Ukrainians who live in Transdniester. Yushchenko’s website reported that he and Smirnov, apart from political issues, also discussed the supply of Ukrainian textbooks to Ukrainian-language schools in Transdniester and quotas for students from Transdniester at Ukrainian universities.

Emotions run high on both sides, like family members separated for years. Transdniester is suspect of Moldova’s intentions and Moldova completely disregards the separatist government, eyeing Russia. For more on that, see my previous post linked above and the full RFE/RL article. But despite some of the grandstanding, and especially Russia’s attempts to thwart the process toward democratic stability (as much as they say they hate it, instability seems to work in their favor in many parts of the former USSR), both sides are taking great interest in the plan. As the article notes, we could see election and reintegration within 18 month’s time.