Chisinau  - A comprehensive treaty with Romania resolving border and trade issues is the top foreign policy priority of Moldova's newly elected pro-Europe government, a senior official said Tuesday.

"We need to get signed a basic political treaty (with Romania) to exclude speculation about relations between the Republic of Moldova and Romania," Vlad Filat, the ruling coalition's nominee for the post of prime minister, said in a ProTV Chisinau television interview.

The four-party alliance in control of Moldova's parliament since elections in late July wants and will work towards a "big treaty" with Bucharest, Filat said. The key articles of such a treaty would codify the two countries' mutual independence and make possible the free movement of Moldovan nationals into Romania.

"This is all part of our programme ... to bring Moldova closer to the European Union," Filat said.

Moldova's status as an independent nation has been challenged by far-right Romanian politicians but not formally by Bucharest. The two countries are ethnically closely linked, as Moldova was a province of Romania until 1940.

As an EU member, Romania requires Moldovan nationals to obtain visas for entrance. Moldova's new government last week waived a similar requirement for Romanian nationals visiting Moldova.

More open borders between Romania and Moldova would help the economies of both countries, Filat said.

Moldova's economy is heavily dependant on income from citizens working abroad. Money sent home by Moldovan migrant labourers accounts for as much as one-third of the former Soviet republic's gross domestic product, according to Infotag reports.

Visa-free movement by Moldovans into other EU nations is a longer- team goal of the new government and will become a reality by 2012, Filat predicted.

Moldova's relations with Russia will be "pragmatic ... and in mutual interest ... but we will no longer go hat-in-hand to Moscow," Filat said, in a reference to frequent Kremlin visits by leaders of Moldova's ousted Communist government during the last decade.

"We (members of Moldova's new government) will not be travelling there (Moscow) nearly so often," Filat said.

His first official visits as Moldova's "European integration" prime minister would be to Brussels, Paris, Berlin, Bucharest, and Kiev, he said.  dpa