Russia said on Friday it wants to help solve a separatist conflict in ex-Soviet Moldova, part of a drive to prove that despite its war with Georgia it can still act as an honest broker among its neighbours.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who served as president until May this year and retains much of his influence, met Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin to discuss the conflict with the breakaway Transdniestria region.
Many of Russia's neighbours are wary of Russian influence after it sent troops into Georgia in August, but since then it has renewed efforts to broker peace deals in other "frozen conflicts" left over from the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov told reporters on the sidelines of a summit of ex-Soviet prime ministers in the Moldovan capital that Moscow wanted to revive a Russian peace plan that Moldova rejected in 2003.
"We really do believe that the peace plan that was proposed back then was effective and could have been implemented," Shuvalov told reporters.
"We will now try to reach new agreements, taking as our starting point the territorial integrity of Moldova."
In the early 1990s Transdniestria, which has a majority Russian-speaking population, broke away from Moldova, which has ethnic and cultural ties to neighbouring Romania.
Russia sent troops to intervene in the conflict and some have stayed in the region as a peacekeeping force, though many Moldovans accuse them of siding with the separatists.
The plan previously proposed by Moscow involved a federal state in which Transdniestria would have a large degree of autonomy and Russian forces would remain in the region to oversee the agreement.
In a separate effort to prove Russia's peacekeeping credentials after the war with Georgia, President Dmitry Medvedev convened a meeting of the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to discuss the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh territory.
Observers say Moscow has reasonable prospects of brokering a deal over Transdniestria because both Moldova, one of Europe's poorest states, and the separatists rely on natural gas and other supplies from Russia for their economic survival.
Russia's war with Georgia was focused on the breakaway South Ossetia region, scene of another of the "frozen conflicts" inherited from the Soviet Union. (Reporting by Denis Dyomkin; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Richard Williams)
Source: Reuters
