Lithuania in the News
27th May 2012
A Very Positive Outcome for Lithuania at the NATO Chicago Summit
President Dalia Grybauskaitė is greeted by President Obama and
NATO Secretary General Anders Rasmussen. Photo courtesy lrp.lt
The recent NATO Chicago Summit, 20-21 May 2012, was very successful for Lithuania. All of Lithuania’s long term defence aims achieved strong NATO backing and Lithuania was able to consolidate its defence position. Concrete defence plans for the Baltic States are now a reality.
NATO unambiguously reaffirmed its commitment to Baltic air-policing, where NATO warplanes, stationed at the Zokniai airport in Lithuania, patrol the airspace over Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. This Baltic air-policing commitment has now been made permanent. President Obama made it clear that USA considers this a very good example of intelligent resource use in NATO mutual defence commitments. During the NATO Summit the Baltic leaders also met President Obama privately.
Strong support was expressed for the Energy Security centre in Vilnius to become an officiallly accredited NATO Competence Centre. Another important outcome was that the increasing militarisation of Russia’s Kaliningrad region, very much of concern to Lithuania, will now be under NATO’s robust attention.

Further information: www.lrp.lt 21/05/12   www.lrytas.lt 20-22/05/12