Paksas heads new Liberal Democrats

Former Lithuanian prime minister Rolandas Paksas was elected head of the new Liberal Democratic Party on March 9.

The new party's founding meeting took place in Vilnius. Paksas got 563 of the 566 votes cast.

"We haven't arrived out of nowhere. We were forced out of the Lithuanian Liberal Union, we experienced much pain, but we also learned valuable lessons," Paksas recalled for the assembled audience.

Paksas said the party's principles were "liberal toward business, social policy based on labor, order in the state."

The new party supports Lithuania's twin foreign policy goals - joining the EU and NATO.

"NATO and the EU are our future. This choice raises no doubts, but it doesn't mean we will submissively bow to the bureaucrats in Brussels, forgetting Lithuanian interests," Paksas said.

Paksas reiterated the theme of energy supply, an issue that ran through both of his periods in the office of Lithuanian prime minister in the past. He said Lithuania should remain a nuclear energy producing country, and that Lithuanian liberal democrats need to initiate a referendum on the matter.

There was also discussion of an idea of legislation, or even a constitutional amendment, to obligate the government and municipal bodies to create jobs.