Democratic Party head Marian Lupu wants "largest possible coalition," refuses bi-lateral agreement with Party of Communists

Marian Lupu was Speaker between 2005 and 2009, and is a former member of the Party of Communists. He recently joined the Democratic Party, which he led during the July 29 elections. The Democratic Party will have 13 seats in the next legislature. Mr. Lupu made a series of statements during a press conference today setting up his foreign and domestic policy priorities. Imedia compiled a few excerpts of statements he made in English:

"Recently, a couple of weeks ago, the Democratic Party launched a conceptual paper regarding its position about the priorities of the foreign policy of Moldova. We have indicated three major issues within that conceptual approach. First, the integration of Moldova. That means the development and application here in the country of what I call European values, European standards and norms, in different functional systems: political, democratic, economic, and social, because those standards represent models for the future development of our state. According to my vision, there are no alternatives to the current EU models. They should be applied here, in Moldova.

During the next couple of years, our intention is to implement all the necessary measures for deblocking the possibility to start negotiations on the new association agreement with the European Union. That will, we guess, allow us to get an asymmetric free trade regime with EU member states, which is extremely important for my country because we have an export-oriented economy. Secondly, we need to deal with another, very sensitive, issue - the visa regime for Moldovans going to Europe.

Another priority is the normalization of our relations with our neighbors, both Ukraine and Romania.

Last but not least, we want to stress the development of a strategic partnership with our traditional Eastern partners - the Russian Federation and Moldova's activity in the frame of the Commonwealth of Independent States. We are there to attend to the economic and trade dimension.

This will result in a very balanced, very reasonable, and very intelligent foreign policy that should be developed by Moldovan authorities.

In terms of alliances, we think that the best formula is to work on the largest possible coalition because the political situation is extremely difficult, and the only way to overcome the political blockage is to negotiate hard. But there are no alternative ways for setting up such a coalition. This is the best way for solving political problems, for reinstalling stability in Moldova, ensuring the necessary radical changes in the democratic, political, social, and economic sectors, and for tackling the very difficult problems of the economic crisis in this country."