Emergency teams to help trucks stuck at border

VILNIUS- On August 11, Lithuania's Minister of ForeignAffairs Vygaudas Usackas called in Ambassador of the Russian FederationVladimir Chkhikvadze and requested him to provide explanations concerning thediscriminatory measures that are applied to the Lithuanian road carriers.

The Minister stressed that the situation on theLatvian-Russian border is intolerable.

"The discrimination of Lithuanian road carriersdoes not correspond to the constructive and pragmatic relations between Lithuania and Russia", Minister V.Usackas said.

The Minister urged the Russian Federation to take immediate actions for the resolutionof the situation and to stop discriminating the road carriers from the Republic of Lithuania.

Today, Lithuania's Foreign Minister alsosigned a letter to the European Commission with a request to guarantee equalconditions for competition of the European Union road carriers and to assurethat road carriers are not discriminated on national basis.

Fire and Rescue Department ofLithuania has sent the Lithuanian Emergency Response Team to scopeout the situation at the border with dozen-kilometer queues of trucks ofLithuanian carriers which formed after the Russian customs officers tightenedthe inspection of vehicles headed LtColVygandas Kurkulis,deputy director of the Fire and Rescue Department.

 According to the information presented by the Latvian customs, at themoment there stand 630 cargo vehicles lining up at the Terehov border. In thelast day, 128 vehicles were allowed to enter Russia. There are 230 vehiclesstanding at the Grebnev border post; 98 vehicles crossed the border over thepast day.