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During the meeting with Germany’s State Secretary of the Federal Foreign Office Emily Haber on 9 September, Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Audronius Ažubalis drew her attention to the existing imperfection of the implementation of the EU sanctions and stressed the necessity to improve the Schengen system, as well as to prevent possible mistakes.

At the meeting in Bad Reichenhall, Germany, the Minister said that repeated attempts of the citizens of Belarus, to who the EU’s travel restrictions apply, to obtain a Schengen visa show the imperfection of the implementation of sanctions.

According to A.Ažubalis, the greatest problem, which is also often abused, is the transcription into Latin of the personal names that are originally spelled in the Cyrillic alphabet.

Participants of the meeting agreed to further require that the government of Belarus should release and rehabilitate all political prisoners, and stop political persecution against them.

The EU also has to remain open for simple Belarusians, promote civil society in Belarus and support its members in exile.

Participants of the meeting also discussed the implementation of the EU’s Eastern Partnership programme and the preparation for the upcoming Eastern Partnership summit, which is to be held on 29-30 September in Warsaw.

According to A.Ažubalis, Lithuania speaks in favour of offering a “European perspective” to the Eastern European partners that implement internal reforms in line with the EU’s standards, in favour of relaxing visa regime that will facilitate travelling for people and in favour of opening the negotiations on a Free Trade Agreement with Moldova and Georgia, as well as in favour of completing the ongoing negotiations with Ukraine.

A.Ažubalis conveyed an invitation for the German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle to the OSCE Ministerial Council in Vilnius on 6-7 December. The Council is expected to make important decisions on the issues of media freedom, national human rights institution-building, energy and cyber security, fight against international threats, relations with partners in Asia and the Mediterranean Sea region, and in the field of protracted conflicts.

On 9 September in Bad Reichenhall, the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Audronius Ažubalis and Emily Haber mediated the meeting of Prime Minister of Moldova Vlad Filat and leader of Transnistria Igor Smirnov, which aimed to promote a dialogue at the highest level for the solution of practical problems and the implementation of mutual confidence-building measures.

At the beginning, A.Ažubalis stressed the necessity to continue making efforts to encourage a direct dialogue between Moldova and Transnistria, and to implement mutual confidence-building measures. Greater confidence would be also promoted by a joint solution of the issues that are important to ordinary people on both banks of the River Dniester.

It is expected that the meeting between V.Filat and I. Smirnov would give impetus to resume the official negotiations on the settlement of the Transnistrian conflict, which had been stalled since 2006.

Later, the Foreign Minister of Lithuania discussed perspectives for the settlement of the Transnistrian conflict during a separate bilateral meeting with Moldova’s Prime Minister.

The resumption the official negotiations to settle the Transnistrian conflict is one of the priorities of Lithuania’s Chairmanship of the OSCE in 2011. A.Ažubalis, as the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, has visited Moldova two times over the past couple of years.