VILNIUS - Four NATO members - Great Britain, Denmark, Norway and Belgium - announced that they would help the Baltics establish a system of regular air policing across the Baltic skies.
On the same day as the alliance's expansion, four Belgian fighter planes landed at Zokniai Airport outside Siauliai on March 29 to take up their new assignment, which will include rapid response tasks and, should a threat arise, appropriate defensive measures.
Speaking in Washington, Lithuania's Defense Minister Linas Linkevicius said that "the integration process has been completed" with the arrival of the four F-16 jets.
"As it has been promised, everything has happened on time. Lithuania is already under NATO's shield," Linkevicius said.
Army commander Maj. Gen. Jonas Kronkaitis, who personally welcomed the pilots, called the event "historic."
"For the first time, the land and sky of Lithuania will be protected by NATO aircrafts. This time there are Belgian pilots, but we are looking forward to receiving Danish, Norwegian and British pilots in the future as well," Kronkaitis said.
"When we heard NATO planes roaring today, while sitting at a radio station studio, we understood that NATO is a reality," Lithuania's Parliamentary Chairman Arturas Paulauskas said.
In mid-March the North Atlantic Council decided that the air space of all 26 members would be protected according to the same standards previously afforded to the 19 members. Lithuania was chosen as a base for the planes since it possesses the best military airfield.
But even though the fighters will be permanently based in Lithuania there will be reserve airports in Latvia and Estonia for emergency purposes, Linkevicius said.
The Baltics have no air force capacities to speak of and therefore cannot ensure sufficient air protection and perform simple air policing, which consists of preventing air space violations and escorting aircraft that lose course.
The aircrafts will be serviced by Danish, British and Norwegian specialists, and it is expected that the four countries' airplanes and pilots will patrol Baltic air space on a rotating basis.
The reaction from Russia has been less enthusiastic. Earlier this month Russian presidential envoy Sergei Yastrzhembsky said he could see no reason for NATO to deploy in the Baltics since the area was not involved in the international fight against terrorism. He said it is difficult to see why NATO forces were needed so far away from the Middle East or Central Asia.
NATO Secretary General Jaap De Hoop Scheffer said the decision to use NATO fighters to patrol the Baltics was fully explained to Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov when it was taken two weeks ago.
"It's NATO airspace and NATO airspace has always been patrolled and covered, which will always be the case when later today the alliance will be formally enlarged by seven new member states," De Hoop Scheffer said.
Kiril Koktysh, a political expert at the Institute of International Relations in Moscow, said Russian objections were not driven so much by a genuine fear of the NATO deployment but by public opinion, which is strongly against any NATO activities in neighboring countries.
Koktysh said Russian officials realized that NATO does not present an immediate threat because as an alliance NATO can only make decisions on the basis of consensus.
"The move is more likely to be understood as a demonstration of an unfriendly attitude," he said. "It makes no sense to speak about real danger coming from NATO because in fact NATO, as a military organization, is a thing of the past. NATO will survive as a political club. However, as long as a principle of consensus remains, NATO can hardly be able to take decisions on mutual military actions or military operations."
But, he said, the reaction of the Russian population is different. Most Russians see the alliance as a military organization and not as a "political club," he explained.
Koktysh said that in any event, Russia was unlikely to take military steps to counter NATO expansion.
"I don't think Russia will take any military measures," he said. "It can probably be ruled out entirely because there is no specific [reason] for doing so, and there are no specific possibilities for it anyway... It is also hardly possible to make [the system] stronger." o
(BNS, AFP, RFE/RL)
