OSCE, EU refused to recognize referendum in Moldova's separatist Transdnestr region

More than 97 percent of registered voters supported independence, according to Transdnestr officials.

About 300,000 voters, or nearly 79 percent of those who are registered, showed up at the polls.

Only Georgia's breakaway province of Abkhazia, which held its own independence vote in 1999, has recognized the referendum.

Officials in the Moldovan capital of Chisinau and at the European Union dismissed the referendum. But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov praised it, calling the vote "democratic and open."

Lavrov noted that hundreds of monitors from former Soviet republics and Europe observed the referendum. "They could watch the people's will," he said.

But Lavrov's ministry was reluctant to go too far, refraining from officially acknowledging the controversial vote and commenting on its results. Russia earlier pledged to respect Moldova's territorial integrity.

In Chisinau, meanwhile, Natalya Vishanu, a spokeswoman for Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin, said in an interview: "We don't consider it a referendum, and we don't accept its outcome."

The Moldovan government issued a statement Monday saying the referendum sought to "torpedo" Moldovan unification talks and called on other countries not to acknowledge the vote.

The European Council and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the continent's premier human-rights groups, and the EU also refused to recognize the referendum.

/The Moscow Times/