VILNIUS - The Lithuanian Embassy in Belarus will become NATO's contact point embassy in the country beginning Sept. 1, the Foreign Ministry's security policy department director, Kestutis Jankauskas, said this week.
The alliance on July 26 approved of Lithuania's candidacy to serve as NATO's contact point embassy in Belarus.
A contact point embassy is NATO's informal representative office. Established in 1992, they inform the public, the media, academic institutions and communities, NGOs of respective states about the alliance's activities, objectives and tasks, as well as encourage cooperation between such a state and NATO.
There are 21 countries, a majority of which participate in NATO's Partnership for Peace Program and Mediterranean Dialogue, in which one of the NATO states' embassies is picked as the alliance's contact point embassy by common agreement for two years.
In the words of diplomats, most NATO states' embassies seek to become contact point embassies. The opportunity to represent the alliance in partner states is considered to be an honorable duty.
"The NATO decision is a well-deserved evaluation of Lithuania's work with its eastern neighbors. Lithuania is preparing to perform the functions of contact point embassy very seriously and will make every effort to inform the public of neighbor states about NATO's role," Jankauskas told the Baltic News Service.
"Moreover, such a decision of NATO's confirms that the objective recently set by Lithuania, an active regional leader, is noticed and valued by allies," he added.
Raimundas Lopata, director of the Institute of International Relations and Political Science of Vilnius University, said that the granting of such status was a diplomatic achievement, as many states compete for it, irrespective of the country in which the embassy is established.
He also stressed that no one could predict the reaction of Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, who has spoken openly about how NATO expansion to the east has become a threat to Belarusian security, to the new status of the Lithuanian Embassy in Minsk.
"Much will depend on Vilnius initiatives. However, in such case, this will not be a position of Vilnius only, and we will have a very solid backing," Lopata said.
Estonia's Embassy in Finland was designated the alliance's contact embassy in the Nordic country. The press secretary of Estonia's permanent representative office said a decision had been made in principle and that the fuction would begin as of Sept. 1.
