Thursday, 25 December 2008
President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia has put forward an initiative to sign the new European Security Treaty that is to unite all the states of the Euro-Atlantic world on the basis of the common and equal ground rules. It is difficult to overestimate the meaning of the Russian President’s initiative. Over the past several years the European security system became vague because some countries had taken unilateral and thoughtless actions to recognize the independence of the Serbian province of Kosovo and to place a missile defense system in Eastern Europe. A whole number of the region’s countries, including Moldova, may lose their neutrality.
The recent Georgian-South Ossetian conflict demonstrated what the security system unbalance in a region can lead to. This crazy bloody massacre was stopped by two strong-willed people, Dmitry Medvedev and Nicolas Sarkozy. However the world situation becomes extremely strained and new clashes can break out.
Russia calls for creating the equal system without isolating somebody and without “areas having different security level”. What is needed is to work out new hard and fast, binding ground rules for many years. Moscow is not going to destroy the existing international organizations. On the contrary, it proposed harmonizing their activities on the basis of common rules.
The treaty proposed by Russia should include clear-cut confirmation of the fundamental principles of security and intergovernmental relations in the whole EuroatlAntic area. Those are adherence to honest meeting of international engagements; respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of the states as well as for all other principles that the UN Charter contains.
Russia demands that the West should confirm the inadmissibility of use of force or of its threat in the international relations. The treaty must guarantee the uniform interpretation and observation of those principles, secure the unity of approaches to prevention and peaceful settlement of the conflicts in the EuroAtlanic area. There is a need to stress the talks with account taken of the sides’ opinions and with infinite respect for the peacemaking mechanisms. It is also important that the argument settlement procedures are offered to secure.
The principle of consolidating three following provisions is also of great importance: not to assure one’s own security at the expense of other nations’ security; not to take actions, which would weaken the common security area, within any military alliances or coalitions; and, finally, not to allow the military and political alliances to develop to the detriment of security of other treaty participants. Russia proposes concentrating on the military and political issues since the so-called “hard security” plays a crucial role in the modern world and here the dangerous shortage of controlling mechanisms recently appeared.
The Russian President believes that the treaty must read that no states and no international organizations can have exclusive rights to maintain peace and stability in Europe. According to Dmitry Medvedev, this applies to Russia in full measure. Finally, it is extremely rational to set the basic parameters of control over armaments and of reasonable sufficiency in military construction and the new quality of interaction in such aspects as the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and drug trafficking.
The utmost importance is attached to conclusion of the new, comprehensive and binding U.S.-Russia agreement on nuclear disarmament that is expected to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which expires in several months. However Dmitry Medvedev fairly noted that the agreement must be binding rather than declaratory.
I believe that all those initiatives fully meet Moldova’s foreign-policy doctrine. Moreover, Moldova is interested in creating such a mechanism more than other European countries. In Moldova there is an unsettled territorial conflict and this country needs the pan-European legal guarantees of sovereignty, territorial integrity and political state independence. Moldova is interested in the guaranteed principle of non-use of force and the unity of approaches to the peaceful conflict settlement as well as in securing the single procedure of the international argument settlement more than other states.
December 25, 2008
VASILE TARLEV,
Chairman of the Centrist Union of Moldova, former Prime Minister of Moldova, Chisinau
