Moldovan Troops Ordered to Put Down Secessionists

President Mircea Snegur of Moldova imposed a state of emergency on the former Soviet republic Saturday, ordering his forces to take the offensive against Russian and Ukrainian separatists but acknowledging that it may bring civil war to his country.

Snegur, declaring that all efforts at a political settlement had failed in the escalating, two-year conflict, told his nation, “As God is my witness, I never wanted bloodshed, (but) the hour has come when we can no longer delay putting our own house in order in the way that we consider proper.”

In imposing the state of emergency, Snegur ordered Moldova’s police force and embryonic army to “liquidate and disarm the illegitimate armed formations” in the secessionist “Dniester Moldavian Republic” in eastern Moldova, where Russians and Ukrainians fear reunification with neighboring Romania.

“The decree is quite clear--they must surrender their arms,” Dumitru Corlateanu, the spokesman for the Moldovan Interior Ministry, told The Times from Kishinev, the Moldovan capital. “If they don’t, only one option remains--to make them do so by force. And we will have to use force. The conflict has gone too far.”

The Dniester leadership responded with an immediate call to arms, warning its supporters that a full-scale Moldovan attack is now likely in an attempt to crush their effort to establish a separate state. An overnight curfew was imposed.

“Plainly, this decree is a declaration of war and the establishment of a dictatorship in Moldova,” Valery A. Litskai, an assistant to Igor Smirnov, the Dniester president, said by telephone from Tiraspol, the regional capital. “They are already launching reconnaissance-in-force raids along the border.”

Litskai argued that, with all power concentrated in the hands of an emergency council under Sneger and with the suspension of the Moldovan Parliament, “there is nothing to stop Snegur from concluding a reunification pact with Romania.”

More than 50 people have already been killed in clashes this month between the ethnic Romanians who make up two-thirds of Moldova’s 4.3 million people and the Russian and Ukrainian militias that support the Dniester Moldavian Republic, proclaimed after a regional referendum in December.

Most of Moldova’s ethnic Romanians favor eventual integration with Romania, though the manner and speed is debated. In response, Russians and Ukrainians have sought independence for the Trans-Dniester region, which has a population of 600,000 and includes most of Moldova’s industry and much fertile farmland.

Part of the Russian Empire before the Bolshevik Revolution, Moldova decided in a 1918 referendum to join Romania--the anniversary was Saturday--but it was taken back by the Soviet Union under the same 1939 pact with Nazi Germany that also gave the Soviets the Baltic states. The Trans-Dniester region, however, was never part of Romania.

Snegur has opposed immediate reunification with Romania, and this month he offered to give the Trans-Dniester region the status of a special economic zone with some political autonomy.

But Snegur has been under growing pressure from Moldovan nationalists in the Christian Democratic Popular Front, which wants a speedy reunification with Romania. On Saturday, the front welcomed the state of emergency but said it now expects “concrete steps and measures, not just words and declarations.”

Romanian President Ion Iliescu, who in the past has called unification of the two countries “inevitable,” indicated his support on Saturday for the Moldovan government’s action.

After Iliescu met with his prime minister, Theodor Stolojan, and the foreign and defense ministers to discuss the situation in Moldova, the state news agency Rompres reported that Romania would “support the Moldova republic in defending its territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence, for a peaceful solution to the present crisis.”

Snegur is now expected to call up Moldovans who had served in the old Soviet army, to equip them with weapons that the republic took last week from the Soviet forces still on its territory and then to move against the secessionist region on the eastern bank of the Dniester River.

Moldovans, he said, “must be morally prepared at any moment to answer the call of the motherland, which is in great danger.”

His decree establishes direct presidential rule with state-of-emergency committees and the police being given special powers to disarm people and prevent more armed supporters, notably the legendary Cossack warriors, from entering Moldova to support the separatists.

“If no measures are taken, a confrontation resulting in . . . thousands of casualties is inevitable,” a commentator on Russian Television said Saturday evening. “The decree on the state of emergency, while designed to stabilize the situation, can aggravate it even further.”

Vladimir Rylyakov, chairman of the Dniester Republic’s parliamentary committee on defense and security, said that it would not be an even contest--his government has only 2,000 men in its republican guard plus a few hundred volunteers, including 160 Cossacks, but is training a further 11,000 men.

The Moldovan forces include an estimated 18,000 Moldovan police, and Snegur had earlier announced plans for a Moldovan army of about 12,000 with reserves of perhaps twice that.

“We expect them to start a big offensive by morning,” Rylyakov said by telephone from Tiraspol. “This is a serious matter now. I don’t believe the decree is another empty threat.”

Rylyakov said Snegur had apparently given in to pressure from hard-line “Romanists” and abandoned efforts to reach a negotiated solution. On Friday, the two sides had exchanged prisoners, he said, and a disengagement was planned for Saturday to separate the opposing forces.

Snegur, in his radio and television address to the nation, said the state of emergency was being imposed because “every hour may bring more innocent victims” into the conflict.

“For more than two years, the peaceful people of Moldova have put up with the humiliation and infringement of their lawful rights and interests by elements who had come to look for happiness in Moldova after failing to take roots in their own countries,” Snegur said.

“With outside support, they have created a pseudo-state and, having armed themselves to the teeth with the most sophisticated weapons of the former Soviet army, they now pledge to defend its borders from the danger they see coming from the native population.”

Accusing the Dniester Republic’s supporters of “literally exterminating undesired people” in the breakaway region, Snegur said: “The atrocities committed by these bandits have even surpassed the evil deeds of the Fascists (in World War II). This is nothing but genocide against the native population.”

Another separatist group, the Turkic-speaking Christian minority of Gagauz in southern Moldova, also reacted to Snegur’s decree by declaring a state of emergency of its own.