Rebel Republic in Moldova Asks Russian Help

The secessionist “Dniester Moldavian Republic” appealed Sunday for help from Russia as leaders of the former Soviet republic of Moldova gave the rebels 48 hours to disarm and surrender or face attack.

The Dniester Republic’s Supreme Council, describing the situation as “explosive,” urged President Boris N. Yeltsin to protect the Russians and Ukrainians living in the breakaway region and to “prevent by every possible means a massacre occurring in the center of Europe.”

Although Moscow does not recognize the Dniester Republic’s self-proclaimed independence, the Russian Foreign Ministry in response called on Moldova to “act strictly in accordance with the norms of international law, legality and respect for the rights of the individual and ethnic minorities.”

Expressing Russia’s readiness to participate in “any efforts, including international ones, to stabilize the situation,” Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev said, “The main thing is to prevent an escalation in the bloodshed, violence and hostilities.”

The Dniester crisis, more than two years in the making, poses a serious challenge for Moscow, which has recognized Moldova’s borders as those of another member of the Commonwealth of Independent States but which sympathizes with the 600,000 Russians and Ukrainians who live on the eastern bank of the Dniester River and fear the republic’s reunification with neighboring Romania.

“Two-thirds of Moldova’s population are ethnic Romanians, and if they want unification with Romania, that is the right of the majority,” a senior Yeltsin adviser said Sunday. “But if the move is forced, rushed or bloody, if Russians--our people--are killed, I doubt that we could stand by idly.”

Moldovan Prime Minister Valery Muravsky, speaking in the capital of Kishinev, said the time for negotiations is over and that the republic’s government is prepared, after its weekend declaration of a state of emergency, to reassert its authority through military force.

“The leadership of the republic has come to realize that it is impossible to come to an understanding with the separatist leaders of Trans-Dniester,” Muravsky said. “They have gone too far--they are trying to break up Moldova.”

Muravsky gave officials of Dniester Republic two days to submit to Moldovan authorities or be ousted, and his deputy, Constantin Oboroc, said the government is moving to “take concrete steps to disarm and liquidate these gangs of bandits.”

Russian Television and the Russian state news agency Itar-Tass both reported that columns of armored vehicles carrying hundreds of Moldovan soldiers had moved toward the Trans-Dniester area overnight and through most of Sunday.

Russia Radio said Dniester soldiers were killed in overnight fighting in the town of Dubossary, a stronghold, and Russian Television said two people were wounded, one fatally, in Bendery. A Moldovan policeman was reported killed in a rocket attack.

But officials in both Kishinev and at the separatists’ headquarters in Tiraspol on the eastern bank of the Dniester described the clashes as only isolated skirmishes.

In Moscow, hundreds of protesters rallied near the Moldovan mission here in support of the Slavic separatists and urged Yeltsin to send troops to defend the Russians and Ukrainians there.

Muravsky, however, urged the troops from the former Soviet army still in the republic to remain neutral in the dispute and said that their commander has promised not to intervene.

Kozyrev, the Russian foreign minister, sent messages to Ukraine and Romania on Sunday expressing Moscow’s concern over the crisis and suggesting steps to resolve the dispute, according to Itar-Tass.

In Bucharest, Romanian President Ion Iliescu said his country, Russia, Ukraine and Moldova will hold talks this week to seek a solution to the conflict.

The sharp escalation came after weeks of violence in which more than 50 people have been killed in Trans-Dniester, a strip of land along the Ukrainian border. The population, about two-thirds Russian and Ukrainian, voted in a December referendum to secede from Moldova and establish a new state.

The Slavs fear Moldova will unite with Romania, which controlled the republic, a former czarist province, before World War II--except, that is, for Trans-Dniester. Moldova, whose ethnic Romanian majority has grown increasingly nationalistic in the past three years, has refused to relinquish the Trans-Dniester area because of its industry and valuable farmland.

Unrest also continued Sunday in two other republics of the former Soviet Union--around the disputed Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan and in the neighboring Caucasian republic of Georgia.

In Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenians accused Azerbaijani forces of violating a 10-day-old negotiated cease-fire, killing eight people and wounding 19.

The Armenian leadership in Nagorno-Karabakh said the Armenians died when Azerbaijani forces shelled and rocketed Stepanakert, the regional center, then advanced on it with about 1,000 infantrymen and 15 armored vehicles.

“The cease-fire agreement has been definitively broken by the Azeri side,” the Armenian statement said. “In such a situation there can be no question of a long-term cease-fire. All responsibility for further escalation of military actions lies exclusively with Azerbaijan’s leadership.”

Azerbaijan meanwhile accused Armenian forces of shelling the Azerbaijani-populated town of Shusha. In a separate incident, the Azerbaijani news agency Assa-Irada said Armenian fighters opened fire on an Azerbaijani bus, killing one passenger and wounding four others.

The fighting appeared to have seriously jeopardized the cease-fire that Iran negotiated 10 days ago in an effort to win time for a peace talks between the two former Soviet republics. More than 1,500 people have been killed in the four-year-old conflict.

In Georgia, supporters of Zviad Gamsakhurdia, the ousted president, seized three towns and perhaps a fourth overnight, according to local news agency reports, and the ruling State Council said it might take military action against the rebels.

“Talks with Gamsakhurdia supporters are impossible, and they have been broken off,” the council said in a statement. The council called on Gamsakhurdia’s followers to lay down their arms or face “appropriate measures, including military ones, to end attempts to destabilize the situation.”

Gamsakhurdia fled the Georgian capital of Tbilisi in January after days of heavy fighting, but the current leadership has been unable to suppress all his supporters, particularly in the west of the country. Gamsakhurdia himself is believed to still be in Russia’s secessionist Chechen Republic where he was given asylum.