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Your Excellencies, Ministers, Ambassadors,

Distinguished guests and dear friends,

I am honored to welcome you all at the international conference “Afghanistan and the region: practical approach for sustainable development”. First I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Afghanistan Dr. Zalmai Rassoul and the delegation for coming to Lithuania and being a true partner in co-organizing this international event.

I am very pleased to see here in Vilnius representatives from many neighboring countries both of Afghanistan and Lithuania, donor and partner countries, international organizations, NGOs, project implementers.

I am truly proud of our international community which could be compared to the club of friends of Afghanistan, showing constant interest in the development issues of the country and the region by gathering together to discuss the progress, analyze new challenges and agree on next steps of joint efforts towards safe and stable future of the Afghanistan and beyond.

There is a good tradition to meet regularly to share our ideas and find new and more effective ways of action, to evaluate the results and impact. We all are witnessing lots of positive developments and steps forward which were initiated since our previous Vilnius conference on Afghanistan took place in 2010. During these two years international community had several meetings in various places of the world. We spoke about security and stability in Chicago, discussed sustainability issues in Tokyo. Very important decisions were taken in Tokyo, where it was agreed upon mutual commitments of Afghanistan and the international community on the way forward and beyond 2015.

This strong interest through years of cooperation developed into a long time commitments, support and friendship with Afghanistan people. Using the opportunity I would like to reassure once again people of Afghanistan on Lithuania’s long term commitments to support developments and progress of the country now and after 2014 when transition process will be over.

Here I would like to express our deepest gratitude to our partners in Afghanistan in general and in Province of Ghor in particular: the United States of America, Japan, Greece and many others. We are grateful for your assistance, support and expertise, which could hardly be overestimated.

The process of transition is speeding up, reforms are being initiated, and advanced ideas are being successfully implemented. So let me commend my colleagues and friends from Afghanistan for impressive progress of the country. I remember my last visit to Kabul in April this year, where I had a chance to ascertain of the progress myself. Only because of hard and devoted work of Afghani people remarkable results were achieved. Among ones to be mentioned – the Afghan-led and regionally owned Istanbul Process, regional economic cooperation promotion efforts like RECCA [Regional Economic Cooperation Conference on Afghanistan] and numerous other.

This naturally widens the range of questions and issues in our discussions. After discussing and analyzing the problematic of national level developments in earlier international meetings, today we propose to speak from the perspective of regional cooperation by discussing the variety of forms of regional collaboration, joint initiatives, illustrated by practical examples and discover best which could be used and applied by people, NGO’s, countries and international organizations for the benefit of Afghanistan.

The conference I am opening today is a perfect place to hear the voice of Afghanistan, its expectations, expertise and evaluation on projects and proposals for the future. In this context it is important that we would hear the vision of Afghanistan on its role in the region.

Cooperation can rely only on key elements such as trust, mutual understanding and strong will to work together. Lithuania just like other countries would like to share its own experience accumulated through many years of cooperation with neighboring countries. Being young and shy on the first days of the re-established independence, more than 20 years ago, Lithuania step-by-step restored relations with its neighbors, successfully joined networks and cooperated closely on different levels in the region. Today, by developing and implementing regional initiatives, Lithuania has become a reliable and strong partner. As one of best examples of regional cooperation in our perspective I would like to note the Nordic and Baltic cooperation, which gained recognition as a flagship format in the European Union. I am sure my colleagues from neighboring countries will be speaking on this today.

Every region has its own best ways and formats of cooperation. I invite our speakers to share their views and experience on regional cooperation initiatives, to present their projects as practical examples. By discussing and sharing the experience on various regional cooperation types, instruments we are trying to identify those, which could be applied in Afghanistan. I strongly believe we are ready to step into a phase of better and stronger regional cooperation between Afghanistan and neighboring countries.

Your Excellencies,

There could not be ready recipes or magic formulas on most effective initiatives for the social, economic and political development, but I believe open and serious discussion could be a step forward in finding the best answers. I invite all of us to be open and creative in our debates and bravely present non-tradition approaches, ideas and proposals, based on the best experience of your home regions.

Once again I would like to thank you all for coming. Your experience, expertise and readiness to share your knowledge and ideas are highly valuable and needed. I wish to all of us fruitful discussions, interesting findings and observations.