Europe's biggest security and rights body on Tuesday urged Moldova and its separatist Dnestr region to start disarming to break the deadlock in their 15-year-old conflict, according to Reuters. The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe said it was vital to reduce large numbers of troops and stockpiles of Soviet-era ammunition, overseen by Russian troops in Dnestr region. It issued the call on the eve of the launch of a European Union mission to monitor Moldova's border with Ukraine to end what is widely seen as rampant smuggling through Dnestr, a self-styled republic with no international recognition. "The basic problem remains that in addition to Russian forces here both (sides) maintain and command very large military forces with considerable quantities of armaments," William Hill, head of the OSCE Moldova mission, told reporters. "The size of militaries on both sides of the (Dnestr) river is quite a large number. It obviously needs to be reduced." General Bernard Aussedat, an OSCE arms control expert, said it was urgently necessary to "offer the possibility of a balanced, simultaneous and controlled reduction of those forces and ... create adequate conditions for dialogue". He proposed a reduction of forces by 60 percent over three years.
