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On 19 November, during the General Affairs and External Relations Council (GAERC) in Brussels Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Petras Vaitiekūnas and Heads of the EU countries’ diplomacy discussed various issues of international policy, including the situation in Georgia. At the meeting Minister shared his impressions from his visit to Georgia in the beginning of November. “Today Georgia has proved its readiness to resolve crisis as soon as possible and the EU should support those steps. The presidential elections are due in six weeks in Georgia and our duty is to send there as many observers as possible,” said the Head of Lithuanian diplomacy.

P.Vaitiekūnas welcomed the discussions of Member States on sending the EU representative to Georgia to observe the dialogue between the government and the media, and confirmed that Lithuania was prepared to contribute to this mission.

“We should put ourselves a question if we had done everything to avoid the crisis in Georgia?” P.Vaitiekūnas asked rhetorically.

He encouraged forwarding the EU decision-making regarding the trade and visa regime liberalisation in Georgia.

Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs discussed the situation in Georgia also during his meeting with the Chairman-in-Office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and Spain’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Miguel Moratinos, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Sweden Carl Bildt, the newly appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland Radoslaw Sikorski, Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner and Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament Jacek Saryusz-Wolski.

While discussing the legislative program that was framed by the Commission, Minister P.Vaitiekūnas emphasized the development of the EU external energy policy.

Before the session of the Council, P.Vaitiekūnas also took part in the conference of the EU Foreign Ministers on civil-military capabilities development, which was dedicated to the evaluation of the development process of the EU civil-military capabilities.

During the GAERC session the issues of preparation for the EU-China, the EU-India and the EU-Africa summits, the Middle East peace process, Iraq, Iran and Lebanon were also discussed. During the joint session of Foreign and Defence Ministers, the European security and defence policy and the EU operations in Chad and Central African Republic were discussed. Some of these issues were discussed together with Defence and Development Cooperation Ministers.