Lithuania's ex-security chief Mečys Laurinkus to run for parliament with Liberal-Centrists

"I'm thinking about going with the Liberal Centrists," Laurinkus told BNS on Wednesday.

He pledged to make the decision on whether to join the party by the end of the week.

"I am coming to my homeland where I was born as a politician. I once founded the center movement before the party even existed. I am a centrist by nature," the former security chief said.

Asked to specify the single-mandate district where he would be running, Laurinkus said he was planning to go to Utena, a town in eastern Lithuania.

President Dalia Grybauskaitė has issued a decree, scheduling the general elections for 14 October.

In the last general elections, the Liberal and Center Union secured 5.3 percent of the vote in multi-mandate voting.

Laurinkus, a signatory of the 11 March 1990 Independence Act, headed the State Security Department in 1998-2004 and later served as ambassador to Spain and Georgia. He was, however, later recalled from the ambassadorial post in Tbilisi.