March 30, 2014 UPDATE
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Valentin Țigău, 30.03.2014, 12:59
Currently on a visit to the Republic of Moldova, an ex-soviet republic with a Romanian-speaking majority, Victoria Nuland, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs at the United States Department of State on Saturday reiterated the USA’s support for the sovereignty and integrity of this country. During a joint news conference with the Foreign Minister of the Republic of Moldova, Natalia Gherman, Mrs. Nuland hailed Moldova’s decision to join the countries that have condemned the annexation of the Crimean peninsula by Moscow and encouraged Chisinau to continue its efforts to join the European Union. Another issue tackled at the joint news conference was that of the breakaway region of Transdniester in the context of the Ukrainian crisis. Nuland also said the United States and the Russian Federation are participating in a series of high-level talks in a bid to solve the crisis in Crimea. In early March, during the visit to the United States of Moldovan Prime Minister Iurie Leanca US president Barack Obama conveyed a strong message of support for Moldova’s European progress.
The UN Security Council is to convene on Monday for talks on the situation in Ukraine. Since the onset of the conflict in Crimea, the UN Security Council has convened ten times; its latest indoor meeting taking place on March 28th. We recall the situation in Ukraine was also high on the UN Parliamentary Assembly’s agenda last week, when it came up with a resolution on Ukraine’s territorial integrity and declared the Crimean referendum illegal. US secretary of State John Kerry is having talks in Paris with his Russian counterpart Serghei Lavrov in an attempt to find a solution to the crisis following a phone call on Friday between presidents Putin and Obama.
As of Monday Romanian Foreign Minister Titus Corlatean will start a formal visit to Chisinau where he’ll be coordinating jointly with the deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration Natalia Gherman the second session of the inter-government committee ‘Romania – the Republic of Moldova for European integration’, a bilateral cooperation mechanism aimed at assisting the former soviet republic in its European integration process. Titus Corlatean will be accompanied to Chisinau by the head of Canadian diplomacy, John Baird, with whom he held talks in Bucharest over the latest developments in Romania’s vicinity and the security challenges in the Black Sea region caused by the latest developments in Ukraine.
Scores of cities and institutions as well as many companies in Romania on Saturday night turned off the electric light for an hour in order to mark Earth Hour. 13 Romanian cities are vying for the Earth Hour capital contest, whose winner, the city that stands out through a series of varied activities with impact on the community and with the most original programme for the Saturday’s Earth Hour event, will be made public on April the 13th. All throughout Romania, municipalities turned off electric lighting in the main public institutions and largest buildings and encouraged citizens to do the same in their households. Romania has been celebrating Earth Hour since 2009, two years after its first international celebration.
A Romanian soldier was killed and five others wounded by an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan on Sunday morning. According to a communique of the Defence Ministry in Bucharest, the soldiers went on a joint patrol mission with the Afghan forces on the highway linking Kabul to Kandahar. Romania has so far lost 26 soldiers in various operation theatres. We recall that 1050 Romanian soldiers are still deployed to Afghanistan.
