Dalia Grybauskaitė: US President changed opinion about missile defense and relations with Russia

The Lithuanian president, currently attending the NATO Summit in Chicago, said she had been very critical about the US-initiated reset policy towards Russia.

"I will want to thank the American president as he clearly, I would say, changed his position on missile defense, which has caused many problems for us. And personally I've been critical about the so-called reset with Russia when there have been reckless attempts to seek cooperation on the basis of non-mutual benefits," Grybauskaitė said in an interview to the Lithuanian Radio on Monday by phone from Chicago.

"We had to express our objections and put up resistance in Lisbon already. It hasn’t been easy for me relation-wise, but I am glad that finally my efforts have led to the United States and President Obama himself formulating very clearly that he supports our opinion about missile defense, about the air policing mission and energy security," the Lithuanian president said.

According to the President's Office, the three Baltic presidents are scheduled to meet with President Obama on Monday to discuss Baltic defense, the air policing mission and the militarization of Kaliningrad.

But Martins Dregeris, spokesman for Latvian President Andris Berzins, said that Obama and the Baltic presidents would only have a picture together, and that information about the meeting was incorrect.

Daiva Ulbinaitė, spokeswoman for Grybauskaitė, told BNS the meeting would be short but should take place at noon local time (8 p.m. Lithuanian time).

"A short meeting of the US president and the Baltic presidents is scheduled today at 12 local time on the sidelines of the NATO summit," Ulbinaitė said on Monday.

In September 2010, Grybauskaitė said that disarmament talks between the United States and Russia might not match interests of the Baltic region. That's how she explained her decision not to meet with Obama in Prague.

Vaidotas Urbelis, political director at the Lithuanian Ministry of National Defense, said earlier this month that Russia was still using maps during discussions on the NATO missile defense system, where the Baltic states and Poland were part of its defense section, although Moscow understood this would never happen.

NATO leaders have said on numerous occasions they will build a separate missile defense system and not a common system as Moscow proposed.