News

On 29 March during  the celebration of the third anniversary of Lithuania’s membership in NATO at the Presidential Palace Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Petras Vaitiekūnas congratulated the guests and all Lithuanian people.

“Membership in the most stable Alliance of collective defence is the result of patience and support of all Lithuanian people, not just the harvest of consensus and will of the Presidents and Lithuanian political parties or of coherent governmental policy,” said Minister P. Vaitiekūnas.

Membership in the Alliance, according to Minister P. Vaitiekūnas, gives such guarantees of security, which Lithuania has never obtained before.

“The ways we will use it depends entirely on our ingenuity. The Alliance ensures safe haven and managing it successfully is a job which nobody will do for us,” noticed the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Talking about security in the world, Minister P.Vaitiekūnas noticed that it was obligatory to share security with the ones who are lacking it. That is the reason why, the Minister states, we are helping to create safe environment in Afghanistan, Kosovo and Iraq. Together with the Allies we participate actively in the processes of reforms and changes of the Alliance, so that NATO would be ready to react effectively to the threats of today’s world.

“The safer the neighbourhood is, the more common values are shared and the more trust and peace is in our region and the world, the better it will be for us,” stated the Head of Lithuanian diplomacy.

Lithuania became a fully-fledged member of NATO on 29 March 2004 when contemporary Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas M. Brazauskas together with Prime Ministers of Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia deposited instruments of ratification of the North Atlantic Treaty to the USA Government in Washington.