In her opinion, it is also a lesson and an impetus for the Lithuanian diplomatic service to improve its performance.
"My opinion of the situation is dual. First of all, I view it as a provocation in the sense that conversations that were not intended for public access went public. It is indeed a provocation against Lithuania and its EU presidency, which is holding the Eastern Partnership summit, and the event will involve one of the countries that was discussed," the president told journalists in Telšiai, western Lithuania, on Sunday.
Grybauskaitė said that the content of the leaked conversations was highly unprofessional.
"On the other hand, I see the conversations as highly unprofessional and a sign of immaturity of the diplomatic service. If there was no such content to begin with, provocations would not be possible. I think it will serve as a good lesson for the entire service to enhance its performance," she added.
On Friday, the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry confirmed to BNS that it received a resignation request from Lithuania's Ambassador to Azerbaijan Artūras Žurauskas. Ambassador to Hungary Renatas Juška has also been summoned to Vilnius in the framework of the probe into the incident.
On July 8, recordings of three phone conversations (4 parts of the records in total) were published on youtube.com. The conversations allegedly involve Lithuanian diplomats Zenonas Kumetaitis, deputy director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Eastern Neighborhood Policy Department, Lithuania's Ambassador to Hungary Renatas Juška, Lithuania's Ambassador to Azerbaijan Artūras Žurauskas, and Gediminas Kasputis, an official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In one of the records, Žurauskas is said to be talking to a Lithuanian businessman identified as Kęstutis.
All records feature English subtitles.
In one of the published recordings, Juška is said to informally share remarks with another diplomat of the Foreign Ministry about relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia, his personal insights on the conflict, increased activity of Azerbaijani and Armenian diplomats in the Lithuanian institution's efforts to solve related issues, as well as establishment of the Lithuanian parliamentary group for friendship with Nagorno Karabakh.
Lithuania is holding EU Council presidency in the second half of the year, and the Eastern Partnership summit scheduled for November is one of the key presidency events. The Eastern Partnership initiative covers bilateral and multilateral EU cooperation with Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Moldova, promoting closer ties of the Eastern European nations with the EU.
Azerbaijan's Ambassador to Lithuania Hasan Mammadzada has commented that the leaked diplomatic conversations are a provocation against Azerbaijan and Lithuania, adding that such type of language is not possible between two top-ranking diplomats.
Lithuania's Foreign Minister Linas Linkevičius has dismissed the incident as information provocation.
