Last Friday President Dalia Grybauskaitė attended the meeting of Central European heads of state with US President Barack Obama. At the working dinner the Lithuanian President underlined that NATO anti-missile defense must cover all Allies. According to the President, NATO-Russian relations are particularly important for Lithuania owing to its strategically special location on the boundary of the Alliance’s territory. The President said the agreement reached in the NATO Lisbon Summit must not be changed and must not become the object of negotiations with Russia.

By Irena Chalupa
U.S. President Barack Obama’s European tour has offered something for everyone: the folksiness of a walk through an Irish village, the pomp and circumstance of a meeting with Queen Elizabeth, the gravitas of a G8 summit. His trip was ending in Poland, where the president met with 20 leaders from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe after his arrival and met with the Polish president the next day.

That scheduling leaves itself open to competing interpretations. Some of those attending the summit undoubtedly wonder whether this is a case of the president saving the most important item on his itinerary for last -- or of treating their part of the world as an afterthought.

Eastern Europeans worry that their region is sliding down the list of Washington’s priorities at a moment when political upheavals are transforming the Middle East. Others fret that the Obama administration’s much-discussed “reset” of its relationship with Moscow has come at their cost.

Read more at:
http://www.rferl.org/content/obamas_visit_to_poland_could_presage_a_new_era_in_us_relations_with_central_and_eastern_europe/
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