Press release, 1 February 2013
Speaker of the Seimas Vydas Gedvilas stressed at the meeting with the Secretary General of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, that the main goals of our country continue to be further enhancement of Lithuania’s membership of the EU and NATO, close transatlantic cooperation and good relations with the neighbouring countries. “We are proud to have been a member of the transatlantic community for almost a decade. We want to see the future Alliance strong and viable and to take every effort to contribute to it”.
Photograph by Olga Posaškova. Vydas Gedvilas, Artūras Paulauskas, Vytautas Gapšys, Anders Fogh Rasmussen
The Speaker of the Seimas noted that the Spring Session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly would be held in Vilnius in 2014 where the decade of Lithuania’s and the other Central European countries’ membership of the North Atlantic Alliance would be marked. The Speaker invited the NATO Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, to attend the Session.
Vydas Gedvilas mentioned the intensity of the agenda for the near future. “The key priority this year is Lithuanian Presidency of the Council of the EU in the second semester of 2013. The Seimas will be actively engaged in organising parliamentary dimension events, with a particular focus on the Eastern Partnership”.
The air policing mission in the Baltic states, cooperation between the EU and NATO as well as between NATO and Russia, prospects of NATO partnerships, the enlargement policy, and energy security were among the matters discussed at the meeting. The NATO Secretary General thanked Lithuania for its significant contribution to NATO.
The meeting was attended by Vytautas Gapšys, First Deputy Speaker of the Seimas; Petras Auštrevičius, Deputy Speaker of the Seimas; Andrius Kubilius, Leader of the Opposition; Benediktas Juodka, Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs; Artūras Paulauskas, Chairman of the Committee on National Security and Defence; Andrius Mazuronis, Chairman of the Seimas Delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly; Emanuelis Zingeris, Member of the Seimas; Kęstutis Jankauskas, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Lithuania to NATO.
Rimas Rudaitis,
Public Relations Unit, tel: +370 5 239 6132, e-mail: [email protected]
