Russian minister of Foreign Affairs contradicts his Romanian homologue: The Romanian minister "interprets the facts", the issue regarding the Romanian thesaurus was not discussed during his Moscow visit

Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs reacts to the statement made by Romanian minister of Foreign Affairs two days ago, when he said him and his Russian homologue Serghei Lavrov decided to restart the work of an intergovernmental commission whose creation in 2003 meant that Moscow recognised the Romanian thesaurus issue. The Russian’s Foreign Affairs Ministry (MAE) spokesperson released a communiqué saying that „mister Diaconescu interprets the facts” and that during his Moscow visit from February 23, there was no discussion regarding the „Romanian thesaurus”.

According to the Russian MAE, the activity of the joint Commission intends to study the problem of the bilateral relations history. „There were no talks about the restarting the talks on the “Romanian Thesaurus” issue”, the communiqué shows. „The commission was created to study all the problems – the so called white spots, quite complicated, in the history of the relationship between our countries. We have to admit this is a much larger area of research, because in our shared history there have been many events, like Romanian troupes capturing the military patrimony and not only, after demobilising the Russian troupes at the end of the First World War, the occupation of Basarabia and North Bucovina by Romania in 1918 – 1940, Romanian administration actions in Transnistria during 1941 – 1943, Romanians’ actions in the Second World War. Therefore, we wish to underline once more: in order to be able to have a complete and objective historic picture, the Commission is called to study the entire array of the shared, difficult relationships from the first half of the 20th century between the two countries, without hanging on to certain aspects that interest only one of us”, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs communiqué shows.

This means that Romanian minister Diaconescu did not discuss reengaging in the Romanian thesaurus issue, a phrase for which the Russian MAE communiqué used inverted commas. Moscow rejects the idea of admitting to the thesaurus’ issue by creating the Commission.

The foreign affairs chapter of the current governmental programme reads, among others, that „the political-diplomatic action sustained in order to retrieve the Romanian Thesaurus from Moscow constitutes a priority.

Romanian minister Diaconescu declared after returning from a visit to Moscow at the end of February that he had discussed with the Russian minister about the thesaurus. Two days ago, he said in an interview for a TV channel that the creation of the Commission – a fact that meant Russia admits the existence of the thesaurus issue in the bilateral relationship – was a Romanian diplomatic success ignored in 2003.

The Romanian Ministry for Foreign Affairs said they were preparing a response too the declaration the Russian MAE spokesperson made.