CHISINAU (Reuters) - Russia asked the European Union and Romania on Thursday to guarantee the sovereignty of its ally Moldova, where riots have swept the capital and prompted a crackdown on the pro-Western opposition.
Moldova's veteran Communist president, Vladimir Voronin, has accused neighboring Romania of stoking a coup attempt after demonstrators ransacked parliament during post-election protests two days ago and waved EU and Romanian flags from his offices.
The European Union urged Moldova to drop punitive measures it took against Romania and respect constitutional freedoms after at least 193 people were arrested in Tuesday's riots.
Moldova has imposed a visa regime on Romania, expelled its ambassador and denied entry to more than 19 Romanian journalists. It says the measures are needed because Romania is threatening its sovereignty, a charge Bucharest dismisses.
"In the past days, Chisinau has taken arbitrary and discriminatory measures against Romanian citizens," Romanian Foreign Minister Cristian Diaconescu told reporters, describing the visa imposition as "reckless."
Located on the European Union's border but within the former Soviet space that Moscow sees as its sphere of influence, Moldova has the potential to enflame EU-Russian relations, already upset by last August's Russia-Georgia war and disruption to Russian gas flows to Europe at the start of this year.
Wary of getting embroiled in a new dispute with Moscow, the EU's executive Commission said the bloc fully recognized Moldovan sovereignty.
"While understanding the complexity of the Moldovan-Romanian relations, we call on the government of Moldova to resume normal relations with Romania," the foreign ministers of France and the Czech Republic and Sweden said in a joint statement. The three countries are the EU's previous, current and next presidents.
In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he was "deeply disturbed" by the flags and slogans at Tuesday's riots because they showed that the demonstrators "were obsessed with the idea of destroying Moldovan statehood."
Most of present-day Moldova, Europe's poorest country, was part of Romania until Stalin annexed it to the Soviet Union in 1940. It won independence when the Soviet Union fell in 1991.
"We hope that the EU and the Romanian leadership, which publicly condemned the violence, will take action to ensure that Romanian flags and Romanian slogans are not used as the cover for undermining Moldovan statehood," Lavrov told the state-run RIA news agency.
Europe's only Communist ruler, Voronin says Romania wants to seize control of his mainly rural country of four million people where the average monthly salary is $250. Romania has rejected the accusations.
Protests dwindle
In power since 2001, Voronin faces a growing economic crisis as thousands of Moldovans working abroad lose their jobs in the global economic crisis and stop sending home the hard currency on which much of the local economy depends.
"People here simply don't have a future," said a woman walking in the capital who refused to give her name. "We also have children and we're hoping for a better life. We're simply tired of this dictatorship."
The streets of the capital Chisinau were quiet on Thursday morning as the opposition parties, shaken by the scale of Tuesday's violence, pondered their next move.
Opposition leaders have tried to distance themselves from the violence. They said people had been getting messages on their mobile phones and via the Internet about a new protest on Friday which they said they had nothing to do with.
The Liberal party, which won 12.75 percent of the vote in the disputed parliamentary election, called on the European Union to send a special mission to investigate the riots.
Some Moldovan opposition figures say the Communists were behind the violence as part of an attempt to distract the population from Moldova's economic woes. The Central Election Commission has rebuffed opposition demands for a recount of Sunday's vote, which the Communists won with 49.5 percent.
See also:
Moldova asks Ukraine to extradite businessman Stati
Kyiv Post
The Moldovan Prosecutor General's Office has asked Ukraine to extradite Moldovan businessman Gabriel Stati, who has been accused of funding the recent protests in Chisinau, Moldovan Prosecutor General Valeriu Gurbulea told the media on Thursday.
"The prosecutor's office has received confirmation of the arrest in Odesa of Gabriel Stati. Moldovan prosecutors appealed to their Ukrainian colleagues [to extradite Stati] on Wednesday," he said.
"His extradition is under consideration. We will investigate his possible involvement in the organization and funding of the protests," Gurbulea said.
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