Leaders of Moldova and the self-proclaimed Transdniestr Republic have welcomed the constitutional reform plan developed by Dmitry Kozak, the first deputy chief of the Russian Presidential Administration

The scheme provides for creation of what Kozak calls “asymmetric federation” and grants special autonomy status to breakaway regions of Transdniestr and Gagauzia. Dmitry Kozak, recently appointed to the post of the first deputy chief of the presidential administration following Alexander Voloshin’s resignation, has been absorbed in the problems of Moldova for about two months now. The most important of those problems is the ongoing conflict between Chisinau and the self-proclaimed Transdniestr Republic, the conflict in which the two sides waged an open war in 1992. The armed struggle ended as Russia deployed peacekeepers to the region, but the political conflict remains acute to these days. Throughout the years Transdniestr has urged Moscow to let it join the Russian Federation, whereas Moscow, it transpired, has been mulling a plan of reinstating the breakaway region within Moldova. The plan was made public on Monday this week, when Kozak set out on his final trip to Moldova. The Kremlin official brought to Chisinau the final draft of the memorandum outlining the provisions of the future Constitution of Moldova, to be adopted not later than October 2004. Russian ambassador to Moldova Yuri Zubakov officially delivered the memorandum to Moldova’s President Vladimir Voronin; Kozak personally handed the draft to the recently re-elected President of Transdniestr Igor Smirnov.