The Presidential Office said in a statement that the president had signed the decrees pursuant to the Constitution and upon the proposal of the government but refused to provide motives in detail. The diplomats are to be recalled as of September 30.
Juška and Žurauskas came under fire after secret recordings of their phone conversations were published on YouTube. In the conversations, the ambassadors exchange their personal views on the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, the internal situation in Turkmenistan and share biting remarks about state leaders.
Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevičius said following a meeting with the president last week that the ambassadors had lost his trust. The government decided on Wednesday to propose to the president to recall the ambassadors.
Early this month, President Grybauskaitė called the publication of the ambassadorial conversations an act of provocation against Lithuania but also added that she deemed the content of the conversations "very unprofessional and showing immaturity of the diplomatic service." She has refused to comment on the scandal in recent weeks, however.
The opposition has criticized the government's decision. Lithuania's former Conservative Minister of Foreign Affairs Audronius Ažubalis said on Wednesday that this case showed that the fate of career diplomats was decided "based on information collected, falsified and illegally published by foreign countries with hostile motives."
"Representatives of the government legitimized the intervention of third countries into Lithuania's internal matters and the external control of our key state services. The current reaction to the published recordings has showed the authors of the act of provocation that Lithuania can be easily manipulated, because by bowing to pressure we become a lot more vulnerable," Ažubalis said.
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| Renatas Juška and Arūnas Žurauskas |
