MOSCOW, March 5 -- A train carrying about 100 Russian election observers was stopped at the border with Moldova, a day before parliamentary elections in the former Soviet republic, Russian media reported Saturday.
In another sign of souring relations, Russia placed its troops on alert in Moldova's breakaway Trans-Dniester region, which effectively broke away from Moldova after a 1992 war in which 1,500 people were killed. Its separatist government is not recognized internationally, but receives support from Russia.
Alexei Kochetkov, head of an international election monitoring mission, told the Interfax news agency that the rail cars carrying the Russians were shunted to a siding near the border and that passengers were not allowed off the train. He said their travel documents were seized and they were told they would be deported. Kochetkov said that the train cars were unheated and that the Russians' food had run out after a 40-hour journey from St. Petersburg.
"These people are in shock, they just didn't expect this," Kochetkov told state-run Rossiya television.
Interfax quoted an unnamed Moldovan official as saying the Russians were not among the 1,000 foreign observers accredited for the elections.
The leader of an observer team from Belarus said 50 Belarusan observers were forced to leave Moldova late Friday, the same day they arrived by train.
About 1,800 Russian troops remain in Trans-Dniester. Russia says the force is part of a peacekeeping operation and guards stockpiles of weapons and ammunition left by the Soviet army. Moldova's communist government, which is expected to remain in power following Sunday's election, has called the troops "an illegal occupation force" and demanded their withdrawal.
