The president's spokeswoman Daiva Ulbinaitė told BNS Grybauskaitė would not attend the commemoration on Sunday due to urgent internal policy-related issues.
"Due to urgent internal policy-related issues, the president will not go to Poland on 11 November. Sending her congratulation to Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski on the occasion of the Independence Day, the president invited the Polish counterpart to discuss bilateral and regional cooperation issues important for people of Lithuania and Poland at a working meeting in early December or at any time convenient for the Polish president," Ulbinaitė told BNS on Monday.
The Polish Embassy in Lithuania confirmed it to BNS on Monday that President Komorowski had invited President Grybauskaitė to the Independence Day commemoration in Warsaw but refused to comment further.
It will be the first time that a Lithuanian president will not go to Warsaw to congratulate the Polish people on their Independence Day. The Lithuanian president went to Warsaw on 11 November when Poland marks the day it regained independence in 1918 in 2009, 2010 and 2011. Lithuania's former President Valdas Adamkus would also go to Poland on the occasion.
Meanwhile Polish presidents have come to Vilnius on February 16 when Lithuania marks its own Day of Restoration of the State of Lithuania. President Komorowski visited Lithuania on the day last year and this year, and the then President Lech Kaczynski attended the commemoration in 2008.
In April, Grybauskaitė also refused to attend a meeting of the Lithuanian and Baltic presidents on security issues in Warsaw. The president's spokeswoman Ulbinaitė then told BNS that President Grybauskaitė had been informed about "statements by Polish diplomats to Lithuanian diplomats that Poland might reconsider its position on the air policing mission, if ethnic minority problems were not solved."
Lithuanian-Polish relations have been tense recently due to the countries' different positions on the situation of ethnic minorities. Last summer, Lithuania's President Dalia Grybauskaitė said that "making a pause is a better choice in some relations than attempts to mend what cannot be corrected."
Grybauskaitė's senior foreign policy adviser Jovita Neliupšienė told BNS last month the president was in favour of "a pause in exceptionally ceremonial meetings."
Interviewed by BNS, members of the Seimas Committee on Foreign Affairs said top meetings of Lithuanian and Polish heads of state were important and said they believed the president would meet some other time.
Liberal Petras Auštrevičius said post-election coalition talks were a substantial reason to postpone the meeting but he also said he saw a negative tendency.
"I believe we don’t really have an excess of bilateral meetings, especially at this time. Being aware of the fact that we can find solutions by means of discussions and meetings, I believe such a tendency is not good," Auštrevičius told BNS.
"But I hope the proposal to meet later shows that it’s not a refusal to meet but just postponement due to the elections. Elections are an important reason for any country but now our initiative would be needed to propose a place and date and coordinate the agenda which is really full of important issues," the politician said.
Another committee member, Social Democratic MP Vytenis Andriukaitis said Lithuania should be more active in cooperating with Warsaw, Berlin, and Moscow and should make use of all opportunities, including possible meetings.
"To my mind, active regional cooperation with the capitals important for us is an important part of Lithuania's foreign policy. It’s not only Riga, Tallinn, and Helsinki but also Berlin, Warsaw, and Moscow. Therefore, it seems to that that these three capitals of Berlin, Warsaw, and Moscow should receive the president's special attention. And it's important to make use of all opportunities as we have a lot of issues to discuss in these capitals as we need to get rid of that freeze in the region we have around us," Andriukaitis said.
Vladas Sirutavičius of the Institute of International Relations of Political Science at Vilnius University told BNS that, in his opinion, the visit would have been beneficial for the improvement of bilateral relations.
"When I heard about this, I though Lithuania must have been hit by some flood greater than the one which struck New York. In that case the head of state would definitely have to stay with her people, with her nation, and take care and be a paragon of morality. But taking into account the fact that Lithuania merely held elections, there are losers and winners, and the winners are forming a government, I don’t think it’s a great shock or a crisis not to make this symbolic gesture and go. The more so, it falls on a Sunday," Sirutavičius said.
"It would be gesture of good will. We have to make use of such things as relations do not improve on their own, and they can only worsen on their own. So we need to take some steps. Even this symbolic gesture would be well accepted and understood. The absolute majority of citizens would also consider it a completely normal and traditional step. To my mind, they only found an excuse not to pay this visit," the political expert said.
