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Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Audronius Ažubalis thanked his Kazakh counterpart, who is ending his work as the OSCE Troika member Yerzhan Kazykhanov and thanked him for cooperation and for the activities of Kazakhstan’s Chairmanship of the OSCE Security Committee related to disarmament and confidence-building measures in the military sphere.

The meeting of the ministers took place during the 18th OSCE Ministerial Council session in Vilnius on 7 December.

The meeting highlighted the importance of Kazakhstan’s support for making decisions at the Ministerial Council in Vilnius, particularly those on the conflict cycle, safety of journalists and cyber-security.

A.Ažubalis drew attention to the initiative of Lithuania’s OSCE Chairmanship of strengthening cooperation with Afghanistan and hoped to get Kazakhstan’s support for the implementation of new OSCE projects in Afghanistan.

The OSCE Chairman also stressed the necessity to ensure that an election observation mission is sent to Kazakhstan for early parliamentary elections on 15 January 2012.

The meeting focused also on bilateral relations, positively evaluated the project of container train “Saulė” that was recently launched and discussed possibilities to push the development of the project and agreed that it was necessary to establish a permanent consultation mechanism between the Foreign Ministries of the two countries.

Lithuanian and Kazakh Foreign Ministers also opened an exhibition of photographs “Kazakhstan as seen through the eyes of the Baltics” at the Exhibition and Convention Centre LITEXPO. The exhibition offers a glimpse of nature, cities and people through the eyes of Lithuanian photographers.