Lietuva in brief - 2007-06-27

  • 2007-06-27
Brigadier General Edvardas Mazeikis, Lithuania's military representative to NATO and the EU, will take over the position of NATO Military Committee's elder from July 1, the defense ministry reported. The position is the second highest post in the NATO Military Committee, which in turn is the highest ranking military governance body of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Mazeikis will serve in the position for one year. He has been working as Lithuania's military representative to NATO and the European Union since 2004, before which he headed Lithuania's Military Air Force for four years.

The Labor Party has launched an interpellation against four ministers of the current government who also served in the cabinet of former prime minster Algirdas Brazauskas in 2003 - 2004, when the alcohol production company Alita was privatized. The ministers in the cross hairs are Education and Science minister Roma Zakaitiene, Defense Minister Juozas Olekas, Environment Minister Arunas Kundrotas and Minister for Social Protection and Labour Vilija Blinkeviciute. The interpellation, which could end with the dismissal of the ministers, was initiated following a ruling by the Constitutional Court that Alita was privatized in violation of the existing legislation.

A majority of residents in Lithuania's largest cities see the Nazi and Soviet regimes as equally inhuman. Twenty percent of the respondents in the country's five largest cities said they believe that the Soviets were more cruel than Nazis, while 16 percent said that Nazi cruelty surpassed that of the Soviets. Another 20 percent of the respondents to the telephone poll, which was conducted on June 15 - 18 by the Fonitel call center, said they were not interested in history. Some 150,000 people were deported from Lithuania during the 1944 - 1991 Soviet occupation, many of them died. During Germany's 1941 - 1944 occupation more than 200,000 people were murdered, the majority of them Jews.

The former Soviet republic of Georgia accredited its first ever defense attache to Lithuania, the Defense Ministry reported. Major Lela Khikovani will reside in Vilnius and will also be accredited for Latvia, Estonia and Poland. Khikovani will become the only female defense attache among the 30 currently posted to Lithuania. Lithuanian and Georgian military cooperation started in 2001 and has recently been very active. Lithuania is assisting Georgia in planning its defence reform, public relations, logistics, and trains the Georgian military.

Lithuania is set to establish an embassy in European Union member state Slovenia. The Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee on June 20 okayed plans to open an embassy in Ljubljana this year. Plans are that the embassy could start operations as early as December. Slovenia will take over the rotating presidency of the European Union at the beginning of 2008 and Lithuania wants to gain from its experience as it is to preside over the 27-member bloc in 2013.