Victor Sorokin, Director of the CIS II Department at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was quoted by the Russian media as saying that the sides will have to work out a common position on international legal fixing of the Republic of Moldova's constitutional neutrality, on reliable guarantees for previous accords, and on property problems.
Sorokin underscored that the international mediators to the Transnistria negotiation process - the Russian Federation, Ukraine and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, as well as the observers - the European Union and the United States have heretofore been focusing on solving one problem - a quest for a method to restore an elementary trust between the political leaderships of Chisinau and Tiraspol, and how to tune them into reaching compromises.
The diplomat did not confirm the media reports that Russia had, allegedly, put forward its own plan of Transnistrian settlement accompanied with a number of conditions for Moldova.
"A magic settlement formula will hardly be found by anybody working alone. These are the conflicting sides who must achieve an agreement. In such matters, Chisinau and Tiraspol bear the main responsibility. And it is their right to take the mediators' proposals into account or not to take", said the Department Director.
It is his conviction that everything, which has heretofore been put up for the negotiations, remains in force. He stressed that all the negotiation participants proceeded from the principal conclusion fixed within OSCE frames yet in 1993 - that it is impossible to look for a sustainable settlement format on the basis of the present-day unitarian model of Moldova's state structure without working out a special legal status for Transnistria.