Ladies and Gentlemen,

As my subject is Lithuania in Europe Today, I would prefer not to limit myself to informative remarks alone. With your permission, I also wish to share some views on yesterday's roots of the matter, as well as on entire Europe in the world of today and tomorrow.

What is going on and what may happen - this first of all is the matter of interest and concerned deliberation.

Geographically, Lithuania is in the very center of Europe; the corresponding conclusion was drawn and officially announced by an authorized French institution concerning a certain site 30 km away from our capital city Vilnius. That is, when we keep to a traditional thinking that Europe stretches out to the Urals. Grigory Yavlinsky, while attending an international conference on "wider Europe" last November in Vilnius, contrarily, addressed the audience - in a role of unofficial envoy of the Russian Government - and said: be ready to defend Russia's Asian border because it allegedly is "our common border".

I am not sure whether Russian drug gangs are already our common gangs and whether Russia's terribly waged inhuman war in Chechnya is indeed our common war against civil population there, collectively called "terrorists". But the idea of Mr. Yavlinsky was very clear. Similarly clearly we see Russian problem of millions of peaceful Chinese settlers in the Far East area conquered by czarist Russia about two centuries ago. Chairman Mao used to say that 200 years in Chinese history was just a moment, and this political philosophy would also be remarkable for "Wider Europe". Someone could say: with such a perspective Russia is hopeless and helpless and it is not yet changing essentially to be European in the sense of political culture.

At the same conference in Vilnius, Mr. Carl Bildt said that the nearest future of the Baltic States - Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia - would be a litmus paper for Russia's European linkage. I could add: either sincere link or speculative trend. Integration is an instrument for peace, said Mr. Carl Bildt, recent worker for peace in the Balkans. Kosovo, Serbia, Montenegro are open for the future, similarly the EU applicant Turkey. Toward what areas will the enlargement of Europe go afterwards? - Mr. Bildt asked. Certainly, that is the question.

Exactly the same day President V. Putin asked Mr. Romano Prodi about the chances for Russia to join European Union. "None", was a simple and open response. This means Russia has to work hard to say "No" to the leftist European Mr Romano Prodi, concerning his next term as President of the European Commission.

Well. Ladies and Gentlemen, these were my opening geographical and geopolitical points, sometimes quite far off the center of Europe - Lithuania.

Lithuania is a country in Europe for one thousand years. Identification of the site, where a holy man, Saint Brunon, was murdered in 1009 by non-Christian pagans, was described in German Quedlinburg Annals as a bordering area between Russia and Lithuania. We will celebrate this first written mention of our country in a six years' time as Millennium of Lithuania. But this year is already another remarkable historical date and celebration of 750 years of coronation of Mindaugas, first king of the unified Lithuanian State.

The five centuries period of Kingdom and Grand Duchy of Lithuania has passed as a large country stretching form the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, later in the Commonwealth with Poland composing a most eastward advanced area of Western Christianity, adopting and publishing the first Constitution in Europe (NB, the second in the world - just after the United States). Later on, there were two centuries of hard struggle of Lithuania to preserve herself and her national identity. The darkest period of Russian colonialism was the 19^th century with regularly crushed anti-Russian uprisings - turned into manslaughter of resisting rebels in lavatories, if to use modern political language. Then the new 20^th century came and brought us challenging periods of captivity-freedom-captivity-freedom. (Captivity until World War I; a period of freedom as the Republic of Lithuania; captivity with World War II and Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact; and after fifty years of Soviet-German-Soviet occupation s, freedom again - the end of WW II coming for Lithuania in 1990-1991).

We do not wish to continue this chain. For that sake the final liberation of Lithuania may be presented here on a slightly broader scale.

15 years ago three Baltic nations, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, moved forwards to fulfil their task, which must have seemed then to be impossible: to restore and continue their independent statehood, which had been denounced 50 years ago as a result of Hitler-Stalin conspiracy of 1939-1940. The conspiracy of the world criminals resulted in World War II and countless misfortunes.

Then, after World War II, the Soviet Union used to dominate over Europe for long decades either as a post-Yaltan oppressor or a terrifying giant beyond the fence. The presence of that huge red shadow, of that continued international uncertainty, threat, forced accommodation of democracies with nuclear totalitarianism, a sort of conformity with the evil, - all this seemed to be a guarantee of our endured slavery and beginning of all-European slavery. The free part of Europe responded to that challenge by creating its own economic and social Communities, as well as Alliance of Atlantic security.

So, there were two Europes, one of democracies and the other of communism. Both had to overcome this division, and perhaps half of this job is already done. My country Lithuania contributed to this, together with her neighbors in the North and South - with Latvia, Estonia and Poland.

On the wave of grass-roots movements for liberation, Lithuania held first post-war free general elections in February 1990. Immediately afterwards democratically elected representatives of the nation proclaimed restoration of pre-war independence of Lithuania. This happened on 11 March 1990. Commemorating that event (followed by the success for all three Baltic and even more States), the Congress of the USA issued on 8 March 2000 its Concurrent Resolution of both the Houses stating that the Congress "congratulates Lithuania on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the reestablishment of its independence and the leading role it played in the disintegration of the former Soviet Union."

Such high valuation could be treated and further elaborated ambivalently. As usually, there always are two options.

First Option. If Lithuania and all Baltic States went out destroying the soviet "prison of nations" with its long-lasting continental colonialism, then this action and process should be treated positive.

Second Option. If those bad guys "helped CIA", according to the Soviet propaganda, to destroy a fine, exciting superpower - a symbol of the bright future for all the progressive mankind, - then it was really fatal destruction, for which they (the Baltic States) should be responsible.

First option again. If they restored and went on to develop normal relations with their eastern neighbor Russia, - the relations that had been destroyed by Stalin's aggressive expansionism, - then this normalization was made rightly for a better and democratic all-European future.

Should they, the Baltic States, in accord with the Second Option, be denounced of their continued sovereignty and treated as newborns, then Mother Russia has nothing to apologize for but wants to be authorized to educate and order those ungrateful children.

"No" to NATO, "no" to Soviet war crimes, "no" to compensations for victims and slaves.

"No" to normal membership in the European Union if there is no consent to Russia over Lithuania, etc.

The latter issue was recently called, rather wrongly, the problem of Koenigsberg-Kaliningrad. As a problem for the future it was created by the victors of WWII, but recently there were many efforts to make Lithuania responsible (not the United States and United Kingdom) because of the fact that she exists just on this spot on the map. The goal of Russia's diplomacy was to get now the situation of Kaliningrad inside in the EU to be reversed just the opposite - by treating Lithuania, a future EU member, as being inside Russia! Finally, we could conclude that the whole problem was independence of Lithuania.

 Because the Russian empire is still alive in the souls of its militant politicians, these second options and alternatives of perception are still acting badly in the mind of the Russian political elite.

There is no need to remind concretely and citing the sources how often the Baltic States were condemned and threatened by Russian top politicians because of bad behaviour of those nicknamed "Pribalts", of their "revanchism" and "rewriting of history" (these are real quotations of Mr. Ivanov to Ms. Albright), not to mention the fact that a strange legislation still does exist in Russia about us.

Here is an excerpt from Doc. 9244 (8 October 2001) of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe: Motion for a resolution "Definition of the Baltic States as a "zone of conflict" under Russian law:

The same in 2001, the same today, because the Motion has been frozen.

I am sure, Ladies and Gentlemen, you realize that all this was not about the past but about the present and the future.

Lithuania is now at the threshold to the European Union and NATO as an already invited country. We want to co-operate and contribute with Euro-Atlantic democracies, at the same time consistently building good relations with Russia. What does "good relations" mean in a normal sense? Of course, those of equals, marked by good will and mutual understanding. For the Kremlin, so it seems, good relations still mean subordination.

You may ask: is it possible and achievable for those smaller to be on an equal foot with that big one? It is, when we are in NATO. Then we will indeed have good, normal relations and flourishing cooperativeness with Russia. No more imperialistic temptations, no fear and mistrust. When former domination is turned into non-domination, only cooperation, it is beneficial in all the senses.

So, because of this fact, our strife to be inside of United Democracies, which is NATO, occur positive for Europe and also for Russia of the future. Russia of the past should go to the past, sooner or later.

Coming back to the high valuation given by the United States Congress on Lithuania's contribution to the finish with the Soviet Union already in 1990, someone could say: hey, the Americans are so positive because they have always had an interest to destroy their rival - the Soviet Union!..

Such a remark should be expected in turn from the believers of the second option, so to say, the leftist or even pro-Russian side.

I hope, Europe can proceed well to overcome the still prevailing Marxist understanding of society and state as being established first of all by producing. Produce more to sell more to buy more! This limited idea and the alleged formula of progress comes to an end. The European consumerist society, strongly challenged by worldwide poverty and demographic problems, has hardly a bigger chance as the ancient Roman empire had. Something has to be reconsidered and changed. The time has come when former hedonist religion of producing and consuming finally drew our attention to the rapid warming of the climate with the subsequent catastrophes.

If our planet Earth feels tired of billions of consumers, it may turn us into consumers of catastrophes. There are volcanoes and social swamps, ozone holes and mentality abysses, such as this non-marginal European war in Chechnya, where Wilson's principle of self-determination of nations is not applied, and the nice Europe keeps silence about terrible atrocities to civilians because they are Moslems and "black", in accordance with racist slang used by the mob and some politicians in Moscow. What is going on in Chechnya and the European stand of appeasement with those crimes, may become a real moral catastrophe for the whole continent.

The alternative to all forms of destruction is Euro-Atlantic solidarity of nations interested in saving our civilization. The common sense, if not Christian legacy alone, orders us to consolidate in democracy.

Consolidation in democracy! - this is the sense of the European Union, as well as of NATO.

Lithuania is a democracy participating in the process of enlargement of the NATO area of security-stability-prosperity by relevant contribution to good services of the Alliance in Europe, recently also in Asia. Meanwhile we watch the process, with some portion of worry, that the European organizations are not in the proper way approaching the most general challenge for a new age.

Solidarity of democracies appears to be threatened by a possible Atlantic disintegration. If Europe is distancing itself from the US and Canada, even before obtaining sufficiency in a separate European security, non-democracies will give a standing ovation.

Many of remarkable facts look now as belonging to the past - to the period before September 11. Now the world is changing. The entire world situation has changed by bringing new challenges. First of all for the Islamic peoples and nations - where do they stand, i.e. on what level are they distancing from the civilization of hatred and valuing, hopefully, the concept of John Paul II for all of us, Christians and Moslems, being the children of one Father. None the less this is a challenge for Russia, at whose disposal there is a lot of information about subversive leftist and terrorist groups supported and trained by the secret services of the USSR in a not so distant past. Is Russia indeed co-operating frankly to destroy this network? - It is the question to be responded either by action or inaction during quite a short time.

Anyway, president V. Putin could not dare today, hopefully, to go publicly with such grim jokes, as he did half a year before September 11 on Latvia: Macedonian option is preferable, "we could send terrorists there, to Latvia, and to give arms then, but we are not doing it". Goodies, we might say, who are slowly turning into partners.

Actually, terrorism is neither for jokes nor for hypocrisy any more. If a demand to reject shelter in Russia for those "black beret" terrorists who killed border servicemen of the Republic of Lithuania in July 1991, is supported publicly by all democracies, we could help Russia to change for the better. While the units of Riga-OMON and Vilnius-OMON "black berets" are kept on salaries somewhere in Russia, as well as the Communist Party of the USSR - a non-existing country! - then for what sake? After September 11 we must learn to be more outspoken, frank and consistent, and only then we will contribute more to our common security and our common better future.

Now one special point already touched upon before. When we are looking at the post-war map of Europe, we note there a part of Russia outside Russia proper. That is Stalin's last conquest - Kaliningrad region.

We cannot be indifferent if there, in the heart of Europe, an area of stagnation, misfortune, industrial and military pollution and threatening diseases remains outside progress. The resolution of the House of representatives adopted on this issue in September 1996 was a remarkable signal to Europe.

This land, Kalinindrad district, which means its Russian-speaking new inhabitants, has to be given a chance to rule itself in a more autonomous way, co-operating within Europe with great potential benefits for itself. If Russian metropolis stops this trend trying to isolate its exclave from the European neighborhood, standing as before on military and offensive options, it appears anachronistic and for stands nothing but tension. Lithuania co-operates well with Kaliningrad (which was founded as Koenigsberg by German conquerors on an old Baltic soil). Lithuania assists the people and governing bodies there in various aspects, including special privileges for Russian travellers crossing Lithuania, but for a real and efficient progress all-European attention and co-operation with Kaliningrad district is badly needed.

I may also note that recently the matters have turned out more effectively towards assisting European attitude, and Lithuania's case of joining European Union and Schengen rules essentially stipulated it.

The last thing I would like to share some views on, is the century of war - the last century of one big war.

When after decades of confrontation the world stated in about 1989-1991 that Cold War was over, we, the Baltic nations, considered this moment as our long-desired end of WWII. The end of our second and long lasting Soviet occupation and forcible, unlawful incorporation into the occupying state. I remember myself as explaining the position of Lithuania in 1990: "We do not need a victory. All we need is peace and peace treaty."

The Cold War for us was indeed the continuation of the yet unfinished WWII, because none of the victors has achieved its separate and incompatible goal, as well as because the Atlantic Charter from the WWII times remained an unfulfilled promise, if not to say, moral debt. Therefore, some questions for better understanding (at least three) still remain open for further considerations about that period of time to our days.

1) Was Cold War a mere continuation of WWII because of the fact that USSR leadership never treated the capitalist West in a different way but as its historic enemy, and restructuring on the chess-board to whites and reds (after the browns have disappeared) came so quickly?

2) Was Cold War (which contained a lot of hot wars) the real WWIII, after the Soviet Union realized more and more that its task to achieve a world-wide victory of Communism was improbable by using armies and tanks alone, and proceeded to surround the main fortress of capitalism (calling your country "Carthago" in the language of KGB) by revolutionary communist regimes in Asia, Africa and Central America as more or less manipulated cronies of the USSR? And then, this newly fashioned WW III, which mainly included decolonization of all previous empires (except the Soviet Union), failed leaving its main source, Russia, essentially weakened, while the indecisive victors, the democracies, did not dare to write and enforce a peace treaty.

3) Is the recent war, defined by the attack of 11 September 2001, an absolutely new one or a real continuation of WWIII, after its strategy plus technology, as well as the method of employing cronies is once more basically reconsidered?

When I now look from my small site of observation as a former chess player, I recognize common rules on the big chessboard. Those opposing the pressure on the Iraqi flank have an absolute necessity to organize counteraction on another flank, for example, North Korea, to lighten the situation on the first one.

Non-democracies - the states and inter-state organizations of totalitarian fascist mentality and fanaticism - are confronting democracies now again with a hope for deconsolidated and hesitant stance of the latter. Terror and fear confront liberty, as it happened in Lithuania in the late forties and at the beginning of the fifties and once again in the late eighties, when so many people realised: fear is enslaving more effectively than any external enemy; by rejecting fear you become a freedom fighter with more effective weaponry than kalashnikovs and bazookas. Afterwards, being a brave and well prepared and well motivated freedom fighter you can be given also Javelins and Stingers to contribute to common sake of democracies. Such is Lithuania's stand today, on the threshold of NATO and European Union.

What about the last point: Europe and Russia? As I have already mentioned, it would be wrong, if ideas and words on "Russia joining Europe" served as a cover for a more distant grim vision: Europe joining Russia. Somebody is, I guess, living and planning the future in accord with that second vision.

Is Russia of today going to co-operate with Europe on European terms or on Russian terms?

Please, have a look at the European "lawless areas" (terminology from the Council of Europe confidential documents). They look like rouge quasi-states created by Russia (under the umbrellas of corrupt Russian army) in Transnistria, Abkhazia and Karabakh (with additional occupied territories of Azerbaijan). The initial idea of Mikhail Gorbachev - to stop secession of the republics by creating new secessionist-separatist entities inside them - was turned into an enormous criminal business and international threat. Some two kilos of bomb uranium have disappeared from Abkhazia in unknown direction (a unique case throughout the world), while specialists from the same institution in Sukhumi already work in Iran. This country is cooperating well with the occupational authorities in "wider Karabakh", where highly suspected technologies are elaborated and tested, and waste nuclear material from Armenia is brought and buried making the land of expelled population useless for ever. Do those "lawless areas" belong to the axis of evil or not? Unfortunately, all this is going on in Europe, in its part of post-Soviet legacy under Russia's management.

For the time being, as I see it, Russian stile of policy making and not European one is preferred in the Kremlin. But to get an approval, the influence of Russia over Europe should be extended increasingly. This can be achieved by a supply of energy and mentality. From the whole Europe, Lithuania and her smaller neighbors are the first target. This ongoing Russia's "European" approach, as well as interest of Russia to broaden any possible gap between Europe and the United States must be a matter of concern and preventive work.

I am confident that we, the unifying Europeans, together with Americans, are able to cope with the tasks of secure democracy and, in turn, to help Russia be oriented, prospectively, towards democracy, too. This is the challenge of the new 21^st century.

Thank you for your kind attention.