Chisinau  - Polling sites across Moldova were operating normally on Sunday, as a vote to select a new parliament went ahead.

"Practically all" voting locations opened as scheduled at 7:00 am (0400 GMT), officials from Moldova's Central Election Committee said.

The election also will determine Moldova's next President, as the new parliament per constitutional statute will select a replacement for Moldova's current leader Vladimir Voronin.

Voting was proceeding normally with early turnout high in villages and rural areas, eyewitnesses said.

Chisinau  - Active campaigning came to a halt in Moldova on Saturday, as the former Soviet republic prepared to elect a new parliament.

The streets of the capital Chisinau were free of electioneering Saturday morning, as a nationwide last-day ban on election advertising went into effect.

The poll-leading Communists ended their efforts to attract support on Friday evening with an outdoor concert in a Chisinau park.

Chisinau  - Moldovan election monitors on Thursday warned of violence and possible fraud in the former Soviet republic's upcoming parliamentary vote, Moldova-1 television reported.

Observers working for the NGO Citizens Control Elections 2009 (CCE) said violence thus far had been on a low level but could intensify.

On Thursday, occupants of an automobile driving past the Chisinau headquarters of the currently third-place Liberal Democratic party hurled bags of yellow paint at the building, said Aleksander Babrov, a CCE spokesman.

Chisinau  - Although Moldova President Vladimir Voronin is constitutionally obliged to quit his job after Moldova's April 5 elections, few expect him to stop calling the shots in the former Soviet republic, least of all Voronin himself.

Much like Vladimir Putin, Russia's former all-powerful President and current Prime Minister with little less influence, Voronin appears to be looking forwards to continued political dominance in his country.

Moscow  - Two weeks ahead of critical polls in Moldova, Moscow invited the country's outgoing president and his separatist rival for what seemed less a chat in the principle's office than a candy-for-promises routine.

It was no mean feat uniting the two, who have met just once in almost eight years, to discuss their decades-long dispute.

Russia pulled all its weight to orchestrate the meeting intent on restore its image abroad as an honest broker in the post-Soviet space after its military push into Georgia in August, analysts said.

Chisinau  - Europe's poorest country Moldova appears set to return the ruling Communist party to power in parliamentary elections on Sunday, but future political stability in the former Soviet republic remains less certain.

While party leader and President Vladimir Voronin is serving out his last legal term of office, polls indicate that his Communist party will keep the majority it has held in parliament since 2005, despite local election setbacks in 2007. Opposition parties could capture as much as a third of next legislature, observers said.