Moldova President speaks against GUAM peacekeeping forces

- A number of new regional organizations have recently emerged. Your country also takes part in some of them. As  you know, we mean GUAM. How do you assess GUAM prospects?

- When I became a President, I asked my forerunner Luchinski: what was the purpose of our accession to the organization named GUAM? He started to tell me something about the Silk Road. But he spoke not too much. Then I asked my advisers to prepare information from history. They gave me materials about the Silk Road. I looked through documents on GUAM and noticed nothing of the kind there, like on the way from GUAM to us (laughs). The problem emerged in the economic development of these countries. Thus, here I should stop and approach the issue from a different side.

I have already felt myself a President, completing his mandate. There will be no changes in the constitution. I have noticed that most presidents want to have an association, where they could be though small but regional leaders. This is the organization of the same kind. Furthermore, there are a number of organizations around the Black Sea. The thing is that GUAM has no economic component. They started to ponder over additional functions of GUAM, while we will not not join any military, half-militarized organization or the one even with hints for military organization. Last year they made up a peacekeeping forces. Which peacekeeping forces did they mean?

There is no economic component. There was an initial project, which will be Odessa-Brody pipeline. They will pipe oil from Azerbaijan via Georgia. Then it turned out that the business has no prospects. They needed to set something around Russia, a pipeline or something of the kind to bypass it. This, as Vladimir Putin used to say, is counterproductive. And they will have nothing. But if we have started it, we should sit quietly. But on the whole, the organization is not effective.

Thus in the previous questions you were interested in CIS. We have already recorded something there, including migration, transport and energy. You know that we all depend on Gazprom, while perspective of our GUAM is: does not live, does not function and nothing happens. Though there have been attempts to reanimate it and we know who did it and for which purpose?

- Will Moldova quit GUAM?

- No. We do not consider this issue. On the contrary, we will do everything possible for GUAM to become a functional structure to settle economic and social issues and continue working in this direction.

- And what economic component can GUAM have?

- Energy. Azerbaijan is oil and Ukraine is electric power.

/Day.Az/