The visit of a large president-led delegation is scheduled for April 3-4, Turkey's Ambassador to Lithuania Akin Algan told BNS.
In his words, Turkey expects to resume EU membership talks by July and to open negotiations on two additional negotiating chapters during Lithuania's EU presidency in the second half of this year.
„This is strategic objective of Turkey – the European Union membership,“ the ambassador said.
Turkey's efforts of joining the EU have over the past year been stalled, and since its 2005 application for EU membership Turkey has opened negotiations in merely 13 of the 35 so-called negotiating chapters that EU hopefuls have to agree upon.
During the visit in Vilnius, Gul is planned to meet with Lithuania's President Dalia Grybauskaite, Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevicius, Parliamentary Speaker Vydas Gedvilas and members of the Tatar community in Lithuania.
The two presidents should attend a joint business forum, which is expected to result in a cooperation memorandum.
The Turkish ambassador said Turkey was interested in joining the Viking railway project, which connects the Baltic and the Black seas.
„Today we are the crossroad of the pipelines, natural gas, oil. There is no reason why we shouldn't take our road in concretization of this project: from Baltic countries to Odessa by train, from Odessa to Samsun by sea by ship and once again from Samsun to south of turkey by train a gain. It will be very interesting,“ said Algan.
The issues should be discussed in detail by the Turkish transport minister who is part of the presidential delegation.
