Foreign Minister Antanas Valionis, State Security Depart-ment Director General Arvydas Pocius and Parliamentary Speaker Alfredas Pekeliunas will have to answer questions from the ad hoc Parliamentary commission examining the KGB reserve activity in writing by Feb. 3, the Parliamentary commission investigating the reservists said. "We want to know how they became KGB reservists," commission chairman Skirmantas Pabedinskas told journalists. The panel formulated 13 questions for the three individuals, and the commission's conclusion whether they knowingly collaborated with the KGB will depend on their answers.
In the wake of public criticism, the commission investigating the KGB reservists has decided not to ask Russia for advice in the matter. Although it was inclined to do so earlier, the commission said it would instead turn to domestic specialists. "We invited historian Arvydas Anusauskas, who has studied the KGB archives, to attend our meeting and clarify the status of the KGB reservists," commission chairman Pabedinskas, said.
Conservative MP Antanas Matulas (photo) asked the prosecutor general to launch a pretrial investigation into blackmail by Alfredas Pekeliunas, a member of the Farmers and New Democracy faction. Matulas accused Pekeliunas of blackmailing him over service in the Soviet military counterintelligence, while Pekeliunas claimed no such conversation took place between the two men. According to the conservative, Pekeliunas said that he had information on several right-wing MPs allegedly tied with the KGB, including Matulas.
The country's population shrank by 17,700 over 11 months last year, according to data from the statistics department. In December last year, 3.42 million people lived in Lithuania, 17,700 fewer than in the beginning of 2004. Some 28,123 babies were born in the January-November period of 2004 (39 babies more, year-on-year), and a total of 37,635 people died 's 410 people more, year-on-year.
An oil slick spotted near the Butinge oil terminal in the Baltic Sea on Jan. 31 quickly disappeared, although both aerial and coast scouting continued throughout the week. Gediminas Markauskas, head of accident prevention at the State Environment Protection Inspectorate, said that divers had been deployed to look for potential breaches. "Possibly the slick was very thin and has dispersed. Chances that the [kilometer-long] oil slick will be cast to shore are very small," he said.
Valerijus Simulikas, chairman of Lithuania's parliamentary delegation to the Baltic Assembly, said he was skeptical about proposals for the Baltic Assembly to join the Nordic Council. He said if the assembly, a parliamentary forum of the three Baltic states, joined the Nordic Council, then Lithuania "would drown." "I think that is not very logical," he told reporters. "Lithuania would simply drown in a parliamentary forum of eight countries. We would be pushed aside from active politics."
