President of Moldova criticizes GUAM but will not withdraw

“No GUAM project has been fulfilled since the organization was created,” Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin told the Izvestia newspaper on October 13. The President said he does not understand the purpose of an organization “which does not have specific aims.” “That’s why we have stopped active cooperation with GUAM,” Voronin said.

The Moldovan President says indirectly that his country is preventing GUAM from operating. GUAM decisions are made by consensus, and, as Voronin said, “if we do not attend a specific session, a document it adopts cannot be accepted. It is better that we do this rather than withdraw from the organization.” However, it is a matter of conjecture who this sabotage of GUAM is better for. Voronin is primarily trying to make himself look good in the eyes of Russia by saying he is hindering the work of an organization that Russia dislikes.

In his interview with the Kommersant newspaper on March 11, the President of Moldova said that Moldova had thought to gain economic benefit by entering GUAM, not be a participant in political games as it was now being asked to be. But at a press conference in Kishinev on July 23, Voronin said that Moldova would remain a member of the organization so that it could realize different regional economic and social programmes. “I have never said that we are withdrawing from GUAM,” Voronin noted, although he added that “political issues are what are mainly being discussed in GUAM.”