CHISINAU. Oct 18 (Interfax) - Moldovan President Igor Dodon has said he and Transdniestrian leader Vadim Krasnoselsky will meet for the first time this year in late October.
"[I] discussed with Deputy Prime Minister for Reintegration Vasilii Sova the issues to be addressed at the meeting on October 29. [We] also discussed matters dealing with the preparations for the Bavaria conference on the Transdniestrian issues slated for early November," Dodon wrote on Facebook on Friday.
"The substantial discussion of the issues documented in the draft protocol following the meeting in the 5+2 format in Bratislava on October 8-9 was continued," he said.
"[We] addressed separately the resumption of work of the Coordination Mechanism for consultations on the stances on the Transdniestrian settlement. Positive trends in work of the Coordination Mechanism involving representatives of all branches of authorities were noted," Dodon said.
The Coordination Mechanism involving representatives of the presidential office, the government, and the parliament of Moldova was approved as early as on February 22, 2017, at Dodon's meeting with then-prime minister Pavel Filip and then-parliamentary speaker Andrian Candu. They agreed to coordinate the stances as part of the mechanism in order to draft a bill on the status of the Transdniestrian region before the end of 2017. However, the bill was never drafted and the Coordination Mechanism stopped working.
In the past few weeks, the government criticized the Moldovan president's stances on the Transdniestrian settlement and the suggestions he voiced at the session of the United Nations General Assembly. Prime Minister Maia Sandu said she believes there are no conditions for the Transdniestrian settlement at present, and the corrupt schemes involving the interested politicians from both banks of the Dniester River must be dismantled in order to create them.