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At the meeting with new Ambassador of the United Kingdom to Lithuania David Hunt on 26 July in Vilnius, Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Audronius Ažubalis emphasized strong bilateral relations, stressed the importance of energy security for Lithuania and raised the necessity for solidarity of the European Union member states when executing the EU law.

A.Ažubalis noted that in the short run strong relations between Lithuania and the United Kingdom may further intensify due to greater engagement of the United Kingdom in the Nordic-Baltic cooperation dimension.

According to the Ambassador, Lithuania has been and remains a reliable partner of the United Kingdom on a bilateral basis and in the EU, NATO and other international forums.

During the conversation with the new Ambassador, A.Ažubalis stressed the importance of energy security for Lithuania and emphasized the need for all states that are developing nuclear energy to apply uniform standards in the field of nuclear energy.

D.Hunt informed the Minister that the UK Prime Minister’s special representative on climate change and energy security issues planned to pay a visit to Lithuania in the nearest future. The Ambassador promised A.Ažubalis that he would gladly convey the Minister’s invitation to visit the Vilnius-based Energy Security Centre during his visit to Lithuania.

At the meeting, A.Ažubalis also stressed the importance of solidarity of the EU member states and the need to uniformly apply the EU law. When commenting on the circumstances of Austria’s release of Mikhail Golovatov, who is a suspect in the January 13th case, the Minister stressed that the issue would be further raised at the EU level with an aim to rationally and in the legal language of arguments clarify the circumstances of the incident, so that legal mistakes of the same kind would not be repeated in the future.

D. Hunt said that the positions of Lithuania and the United Kingdom on the issues of the EU’s economic development and on the enhancement of competitiveness coincided in many aspects. Therefore, during his tenure in Lithuania, the Ambassador would aim to strengthen the dialogue between Lithuania and the UK on the issues of the EU economic policy.

The Ambassador handed in the invitation to A.Ažubalis to the London International Cyber Conference in November. The Minister said that Lithuania aimed to participate more actively in shaping of the international community’s policy and its principles for cyber security, and that the aforementioned conference would be a great opportunity to discuss important cyber security issues and problems within the EU.

Prior to the appointment to Lithuania, the new British Ambassador had worked in London, at the Department for Conflicts of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

In 2005-2008, D. Hunt worked as Deputy Head of the British Embassy in Croatia.