A source in the Moldovan delegation told Infotag the reason of the new refusal on Thursday was the recent illicit detention of a truck loaded with potatoes and its driver in Varnitsa village - the Moldova-controlled suburban community of the Transnistria-controlled town of Bendery, an incessant apple of discord between the two conflicting sides since the early 1990s. The driver, a Republic of Moldova citizen, was accused of smuggling, as the cargo had not been registered with the Transnistrian customs, and of offering resistance to Transnistrian militiamen, so the man spent 3 days in custody in Bendery.
However, the Transnistrian and Russian representatives in the JCC presume the Moldovan delegation was deliberately blocking the Commission's work, using a happy opportunity of the presence of a new Head of the OSCE Mission to Moldova, ambassador Philippe Remler, an American diplomat. They maintain the JCC is not supposed to tackle such police questions.
But Moldovan JCC Co-Chairman Brig. Gen. Ion Solonenko thinks differently. He claimed the incident took place in the Transnistria Security Zone, so the Transnistrian authorities had no right to detain a Moldovan vehicle carrying two tons of potatoes to the Moldovan village of Varnitsa.
Eventually, the Transnistrian JCC representatives agreed to a compromise and promised to solicit the driver's release. In response, the Moldovan delegation agreed to continue the JCC meeting on February 8.
At the previous JCC meeting, Moldova refused to approve the Belyakov candidature due to his ungrounded accusations that the Moldovan special services had allegedly had a finger in the blasting up of a marshroutka [route taxi minibus] in Tiraspol in 2006. Belyakov was a Transnistrian Deputy Minister of the Interior then.
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