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Moldova’s main opposition leaders announced Tuesday that they would not participate in a vote recount in disputed parliamentary elections, and the president of Romania angrily rejected accusations that Romanian agents were behind huge anti-Communist rallies last week.

“We will not allow Romanians to be blamed simply because they are Romanians,” President Traian Basescu of Romania said in an address to Parliament in Bucharest that was posted on his Web site. “We will not allow Romania to be accused of attempting to destabilize the Republic of Moldova. We will not allow Romanians who live across the Prut to be humiliated simply because they believe in an open society.”

Communists made a better-than-expected showing in parliamentary elections held April 5, leading to youth demonstrations that turned violent. President Vladimir Voronin of Moldova immediately cut diplomatic ties with Romania, saying its secret services had staged the events in an attempt to topple his government.

Mr. Voronin ordered a recount of votes last Friday. But Vlad Filat of the Liberal Democratic Party said at a news conference that he would insist that the elections be invalidated and held again, Interfax reported. Mr. Filat said voter lists had included the names of long-dead people, minors and longtime expatriates.

However, the Communist (and anti-Romanian) influence also has passionate defenders in Moldova, since Romanian troops allied with Nazis had a cruel record in Moldova during World War II. Russia is seen as a protective big brother against the Romanian influence in parts of Moldova -- especially Transnistria, a breakaway region with many Russian speakers and its own, but still internationally unrecognized, president.

some of the anti-Communist opposition parties in Moldova want to join the EU, if possible by reunifying with Romania. The two nations were unified for a while before World War II, and about two-thirds of Moldovans claim Romanian descent. Reunification was a campaign issue in Sunday's election.

"If Romanians and Moldovans decide in favor of a union," one European diplomat said in last week's run-up to the vote, "the EU will not oppose them."

"The Moscow authorities are afraid of spontaneous mass protests in the regions … and, for this reason, Russian television is showing what is happening in an exclusively negative light," Dmitry Oreshkin, a Moscow-based political analyst, told Reuters. "It is beneficial for the Kremlin to show the consequences of peoples' protests to justify why it needs to be tough."

Russian troops have kept the peace in Transnistria since 1992, and Russian support for the region has been compared to Russian support for breakaway regions in Georgia and Ukraine.

a large protest in the capital was brewing on Friday -- organized on a Twitter stream tagged #pman, which stands for the initials of Chisinau's biggest square-- with protesters claiming the government would use the threat of a Romanian coup as a reason to arrest people illegally.

The violence on Tuesday was a setback for the protesters' cause even within Moldova's anti-Communist community, and some experts wondered if it wasn't orchestrated.

"The protests were initially very peaceful, but then a small group, which seemed to be very well-organized, started these violent riots," Igor Munteanu, who runs a think tank in Chisinau called Viitorul, told Britain's Independent newspaper. "My suspicion is that this was provoked and directed from within. Elements of the Communist leadership do not want closer relations with the EU, as it will mean loosening their grip on power. They know that if they provoke a crisis with Romania and the EU, and improve relations with Moscow, they will be able to continue running the country as they please."

Some Russian analysts on Wednesday were blaming President Barack Obama for the Moldovan unrest, saying American's interest is to hem in Russia.

According to official results, the party took about 49.9% of the votes, but opposition leaders dismissed the result as fraudulent and have demanded a rerun.

Despite some economic progress under the communists, who have been in power since 2001, Moldova remains the poorest country in Europe. About 600,000 Moldovans have left to find work in EU countries.

Moldova's provinces largely support the pro-Russian communists, but the capital favours the more western-leaning opposition.

Andrew Wilson, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said: "Moldova's violent 'Twitter revolution' is totally different from the peaceful protest of Ukraine's Orange revolution."This time, the crowd are not angry at a stolen election, but at the growing corruption of the ruling Communist party, its recent turn towards Russia and an imminent economic crisis."

Russian analysts, however, suggested that the protests were unjustified because western observers had confirmed that the communists were legitimate winners of the election and had certified the poll as fair."This is an active attempt by a small minority to take power," Vladimir Zharikhin, the deputy director of the Moscow Institute for the Study of Post-Soviet Countries, said.

He ordered that Romania's ambassador be expelled, recalled the Moldovan envoy from Bucharest, and said Romanians would in future need visas to cross into Moldova.

Earlier the president described the violence as "a coup d'etat".

Some of the protesters on Tuesday had carried Romanian flags and called for the unification of Moldova with Romania, its bigger neighbour.

Russia's foreign ministry said there was a plot aimed at undermining "the sovereignty of Moldova". But Romania's foreign ministry said: "This accusation is a provocation aimed at the Romanian state."

In addition to the money, international institutions, including the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the European Investment Bank, have been asked to increase their lending in the six -- Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine -- some of which have been hit hard by the downturn.

But the EU may be losing the competition for influence with a more-determined Russia. Only €350 million of the money is new, suggesting limited commitment. Moscow sees the Eastern Partnership, which it has described as EU "meddling," as an attempt by the West to carry on with a failed attempt to expand NATO into the region, says Alexander Rahr, director of the Russia program at the German Council on Foreign Relations.

In a sign of EU divisions over the Eastern Partnership plan, Ms. Merkel was the only leader of a big EU nation to attend the summit. Leaders of the six Eastern Partnership countries also gave the offer a mixed reception. Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus, and Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin, who have close ties to Moscow, didn't attend.

This morningelection officials in Moldova began a recount of votes, which was ordered by President Vladimir Voronin following the protests. The results of the recount will be announced on Friday.

The demonstrations continued into Tuesday peacefully. But later that day, with no response from the government, protesters swept police aside to storm the parliament building and the towering presidential palace opposite. Fire broke out in one wing of the parliament, and the young protesters vented their fury by wrecking computers and office furniture.

"Not only did we underestimate the power of Twitter and the internet, we also underestimated the explosive anger among young people at the government's policies and electoral fraud," said Morar.

Moldova, with a population of 4 million, is Europe's poorest country, and a large number of young people are forced to find work in the west.

She does not believe the current vendetta against her is purely the work of the Moldovan authorities, but sees the Kremlin's hand in it as well: "It was when Russia expressed strong support for Moldova's position on the elections, and condemned the protests, that they started targeting us."

Morar was expelled from Russia in 2007 after writing a series of articles accusing top Kremlin officials, including Alexander Bortnikov, the current head of the Russian security services, the FSB, of being behind the murder of Russia's central bank deputy head Andrey Kozlov in September 2006.

Russia’s foreign ministry, in a statement on Wednesday, said the riots were a plot aimed at undermining Moldova’s sovereignty and it pointed a finger at forces which favour a reunion with Romania. “The Russian foreign ministry hopes that common sense will prevail, public and constitutional order will be restored in the next few days and the choice of the Moldovan citizens will be confirmed by all politically responsible forces,” it said.

Official election results from Sunday’s vote put the Communists in front with close to 50 percent. The vote is important because Moldova has a single-chamber parliament which is responsible for choosing the country’s president.