US Vice President Joe Biden on Friday backed the pro-Western aspirations of Moldova’s liberal government as he paid the highest-ranking US visit ever to the impoverished ex-Soviet state.
Biden delivered a public open-air speech to thousands of cheering Moldovans in Opera House Square in the capital Chisinau, telling them their future was with Europe and applauding the country’s “democratic transition.”
His backing of the government’s drive for EU integration could rankle Russia, which has had uneasy relations with the new authorities who have ruled the country since ending more than eight years of Communist Party rule in 2009.
“Freedom is in the air, and democracy is emerging in countries that for generations have known nothing but authoritarian rule,” Biden told his audience, many waving Moldovan and US flags.
The authorities took unprecedented security measures during his visit, with about 3,000 Moldovan police tasked with ensuring Biden’s safety. Opera House Square was rocked by pro-democracy protests in April 2009.
Biden earlier showed support for the liberal government’s efforts to end a protracted political and economic crisis, in a visit seen in the country of just over 4 million as a landmark event in its post-Soviet history.
Biden also praised Moldova’s efforts to crack down on sex trafficking, widely recognized as one of its most pressing problems, and which has given the tiny country the unwanted reputation as a hub for sex slavery.
He said Filat had “reiterated his pledge to end sex trafficking once and for all” and to prosecute people “involved in this modern-day form of slavery, and that’s what it is, slavery.”
The two leaders said they also discussed the situation around Transdniestr, a small separatist pro-Russian territory of about 500,000 people in eastern Moldova that is not internationally recognized.
A Romanian-speaking country, Moldova was part of Romania between 1918 and World War II when it was annexed into the Soviet Union by former Soviet Joseph Stalin. By per capita gross national product, it is Europe’s poorest country.
Moldova remains mired in a political crisis after the communists were ousted from government in 2009 elections that followed bloody riots in Chisinau known as the “Twitter Revolution.”
Meanwhile, Biden’s wife, Jill Biden, and granddaughter Finnegan Biden visited the famous Cricova wine cellars just outside Chisinau, in an apparent effort to highlight the country’s ambition to raise its profile as a wine-exporting nation.
Speaking in parliament on Thursday, acting Moldovan President and Parliament Speaker Marian Lupu said Biden’s visit would help reinvigorate foreign investment and facilitate exports of Moldovan products.
Earlier this week, Biden visited Finland and spent two days in Moscow to build on the “reset” in ties spearheaded by US Presidents Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
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