President: Lithuania Desires to Join NATO, EU by End of This Year

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, July 03, 2002

President: Lithuania Desires to Join NATO, EU by End of This Year

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Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus expressed hope on Tuesday that his country could join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU) by the end of 2002, said reports reaching Riga Vilnius.

Adamkus made the remark during a meeting with visiting Greek European Affairs Minister Tassos Giannitsis, who arrived in Vilnius, capital of Lithuania, on Monday for a tour around the three ex-Soviet Baltic states, which will also take him to Latvia and Estonia.

Thanking Greece for its support in Lithuania's process of approaching NATO and EU, Adamkus briefed Giannitsis on the negotiation process with EU and the unresolved issues concerning it.

Giannitsis informed Adamkus of the policy priorities during Greece's coming European Union rotating presidency in the first half of 2003. Expressing hope that Lithuania could sign a deal on joining the EU in March-April next year, the minister said Athens will continue accession negotiations with any candidate countries who do not manage to complete them this year.

Giannitsis told a news conference in Vilnius that Greece supports the incumbent EU president-state Denmark's plan to complete accession talks with all 10 candidates by the end of 2002,and hoped it would only play a "symbolic" role in the enlargement process by signing EU accession treaties with the new member countries.

"It is planned for the signings to take place in late March orApril, and preferably in Athens," the minister said.

At Tuesday's meeting, the two sides also discussed the Lithuanian parliament's recent resolution about resuming the talkswith the EU on the free circulation of capital.

Now Lithuania still has two -- out of all the 31 problems raised by the EU for the candidate-states -- to negotiate with theunion: agriculture and the closure of Lithuania's IGNALINA nuclearpower station.

With the progress in the EU entry talks, NATO enlargement looksmore and more certain to go forward this year as Russian objections have softened, but the leaders of the 10 countries striving to join the Alliance, who gather in Riga this coming Friday, will try to answer criticism in the West that they bring little but problems to the table.

The leaders of Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia will hold a two-day summit in Riga, their last chance to give enlargement a boost before NATO leaders meet this November in the Czech capital of Prague to decide the issue.

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