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Lazar Comanescu, the Romanian Foreign Affairs minister came to visit on Monday his Moldovan counterpart Andrei Stratan.

A series of meetings held by minister Comanescu with top Republic of Moldova officials were aimed at marking a period of ice-breaking in the bilateral relations, but all press statements were veiled in caution and only showed readiness to "fortify political, economic and social relations" between the two countries. Out of the meeting with Andrei Stratan, Lazar Comanescu held talks as well with Moldovan PM Zinaida Grechany and President Vladimir Voronin.

'Romania is the only EU neighbour of the Republic of Moldova and I repeat, we have all the determination to strongly back the Republic of Moldova's process of approaching EU with faster steps,' said the Romanian official.

As the media did not have access to official meetings, statements made by Comanescu and Stratan fail to provide a clear view whether progress was reported in bilateral relations, but showed caution and suggested that some issues such as the bilateral and the border treaties are still taboo subjects.

The Moldovan Foreign minister said the agenda of talks spanned a large number of bilateral issues, but did not point any of them. He assured that talks and the dialogue for "solving existing problems" continues.

Meanwhile, Moldovan officials suggested they were ready to re-start talks on the establishing of new Romanian consulates in the Republic of Moldova. Foreign minister Stratan said there was a possibility that talks on opening consulates in Balti and Cahul be re-opened as such talks are not influenced by third factors.

Authorities in Bucharest have been insisting on the opening of two new consulates as the consular sections in Chisinau were unable to deal with the large number of applications from Moldovan citizens.

Lazar Comanescu's visit in Chisinau is the first high level visit of a Romanian official in the Republic of Moldova after PM Calin Popescu-Tariceanu's visit in July 2007, on the background of divergences and tensed statements between Chisinau and Bucharest in 2007 and early this year.