"Let’s not give it prominence. Of course, statements are important, and I would definitely not want to comment on the speaker's statement. Let's start with this. I believe there are simply no reasons for that," Linkevičius told reporters when asked about Gedvilas' statement that the US is very far away from Lithuania and Lithuania will not get gas from it, the implication being that it should pay more attention to relations with Russia and less with the US.
"If you saw any attempts or wish to change something, as you say, to push America back and get Russia closer or vice versa, nobody does that in an artificial way. All partners are very important for us. I have said that many times. [...] But I would suggest you do not put prominence to some individual fact but instead look at the essence, and definitely there's no basis for any doubts," the minister said.
According to Linkevičius, Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevičius "commented on this situation in a very elegant and appropriate way."
The minister also noted that he did not wish to "draw lines" between foreign policies of the previous and incumbent Cabinets.
"We have said that foreign policy needs continuity. [...] If we have certain things that failed, it doesn’t mean we have to make a drama out of it. Let’s just continue, perhaps we’ll change tactics. There are such areas, we have talked about it many times, we mentioned relations with neighbors, we have mentioned other aspects. I don’t think we need to put some very dramatic line here. We’ll just try to make improvement in the areas where we haven perhaps not managed to do so far," Linkevičius said.
Last week, Speaker of the Seimas Vydas Gedvilas said Lithuania needed to improve its relations with Russia and "take care of our own people", and also added that Lithuania buys a lot of gas from Russia and not the United States.
"We have to think about our own people as America is far way from us. We need to take care of our own people. We have very close economic relations with Russia. We buy gas, a lot of gas, and electricity, and oil. This cooperation gives us a lot. We're not going to get gas from America," Gedvilas told the Svoboda radio station when asked to comment on a recent statement by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the United States would resist Russia's plans to create another Soviet Union under the guise of Russia's economic integration.
The program of Lithuania's new center-left government says that Lithuanian-Russian relations need a "reset".
"We will base Lithuania's cooperation with Russia on European values strengthening mutual trust by focusing not on the past but on the future, without pre-defined and hardly implementable conditions undermining good and mutually-beneficial neighborly relations," the document states.
The program also stipulates that "the issue of damage done by the Soviet occupation will have to be addressed through talks with Russia to look for acceptable solutions."
The government program also states that "strategic partnership between Lithuania, as well as Latvia, Estonia and Poland, and the United States within NATO is the key guarantee of our national security."
"Our states will actively and consistently support strengthening of transatlantic partnership between the EU and the US," the document says.
