CATAN AND OTHERS v. MOLDOVA AND RUSSIA JUDGMENT 7 scientific, technical, cultural and other fields, to be determined by mutual agreement. The parties undertook to settle conflicts through negotiation, with the assistance where necessary of the Russian Federation and Ukraine, as guarantors of compliance with the agreements reached, and of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The 1997 Memorandum was countersigned by the representatives of the guarantor States, namely Mr Yeltsin for the Russian Federation and Mr Leonid Kuchma for Ukraine, and by Mr Helveg Petersen, the President of the OSCE. 25. In November 1999 the OSCE held its sixth summit at Istanbul. During the summit, 54 Member States signed the Charter for European Security and the Istanbul Summit Declaration and 30 Member States, including Moldova and Russia, signed the Agreement on the Adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (“the adapted CFE treaty”). The adapted CFE treaty set out, inter alia, the principle that foreign troops should not be stationed in Moldovan territory without Moldovan consent. Russia’s agreement to withdraw from Transdniestria (one of the “Istanbul Commitments”) was set out in an Annex to the adapted CFE Final Act. In addition, the Istanbul Summit Declaration, at paragraph 19, recorded inter alia the commitment of the Russian Federation to withdraw its forces from Transdniestria by the end of 2002: “19. Recalling the decisions of the Budapest and Lisbon Summits and Oslo Ministerial Meeting, we reiterate our expectation of an early, orderly and complete withdrawal of Russian troops from Moldova. In this context, we welcome the recent progress achieved in the removal and destruction of the Russian military equipment stockpiled in the Trans-Dniestrian region of Moldova and the completion of the destruction of nontransportable ammunition. We welcome the commitment by the Russian Federation to complete withdrawal of the Russian forces from the territory of Moldova by the end of 2002. We also welcome the willingness of the Republic of Moldova and of the OSCE to facilitate this process, within their respective abilities, by the agreed deadline. We recall that an international assessment mission is ready to be dispatched without delay to explore removal and destruction of Russian ammunition and armaments. With the purpose of securing the process of withdrawal and destruction, we will instruct the Permanent Council to consider the expansion of the mandate of the OSCE Mission to Moldova in terms of ensuring transparency of this process and co-ordination of financial and technical assistance offered to facilitate withdrawal and destruction. Furthermore, we agree to consider the establishment of a fund for voluntary international financial assistance to be administered by the OSCE.” In 2002, during an OSCE Ministerial Conference in Lisbon, Russia was granted a one-year extension for the removal of troops, up until the end of December 2003. 26. Russia did not comply with the commitments given at the OSCE Istanbul Summit and Lisbon Ministerial Conference to withdraw militarily