MOLDOVA UPDATE: “Moldova has pro-Western revolution even before poll is held.”

All the front-runners in the poll are calling for Europe’s poorest country to join the EU and withdraw from the Commonwealth of Independent States, which is a group of former Soviet republics.

Despite almost 200 years of Russian imperial and Soviet rule, most of Moldova’s four million people have closer cultural and linguistic links to neighbouring Romania, which will join the EU in 2007.

More here: ” Moldova votes for a new parliament Sunday with the election likely to place the impoverished nation firmly on a pro-European path, the third ex-Soviet republic to turn away from Moscow’s influence in little over a year.”

Meanwhile here’s more on unrest in Kyrgyzstan.

UPDATE: More here.