Opposition members of the committee, Conservatives Ažubalis, Emanuelis Zingeris and Kęstutis Masiulis, along with Parliamentary Vice-Speaker Petras Auštrevičius held an extraordinary meeting of the committee on Friday in connection to the diplomatic leak. They turned to the then Speaker Vydas Gedvilas back in early September to express indignation over failure to receive written investigation materials from the Foreign Ministry.
"We received the investigation materials, which only supported our beliefs we had stated earlier – based on the materials, I do not see any sense or reason why the diplomats had to be recalled. There may have been other reasons the committee does not know about," Ažubalis, Lithuania's former foreign minister, told journalists after the meeting.
In his words, Lithuania was clearly trapped by the provocation.
"Let's remember the Hungarian case, when during the Hungarian presidency of the EU Council the Hungarians responded in an entirely different manner. A campaign of active measures and a provocation was targeted against their ambassador in Belarus, even his relatives were involved. The Hungarian reaction was entirely different – calm and cold. The diplomat left Minsk after the presidency. In this case, Lithuania acted differently. It is the matter of professionalism and responsibility of those who made the decision," said the ex-minister.
Ažubalis said he expressed hope at the meeting that "it would be the first and the last case in the history of our diplomatic service and that it will teach a lesson to diplomats and diplomacy chiefs."
Foreign Minister Linas Linkevičius of the ruling Social Democrats told journalists that he did not provide any new information to the MPs.
"The topic is closed, there is no sense in continuing it," he added.
In the minister's words, the lessons of leaked diplomatic conversations have to do with resources.
"As we're not in a situation where we would have a surplus budget and could afford a lot, we have to use what we have and get some quality out of it (...). We have to work hard to ensure at least minimum conditions. Some communications instruments were introduced, they are not available in all diplomatic missions, some are more reliable than others. Clearly, we need more attention, more resources and a systematized approach," Linkevičius said.
Nevertheless, diplomats are taught a culture of handling information.
In the summer of 2013, a scandal involving Lithuania's ambassadors to Hungary and Azerbaijan, Renatas Juška and Artūras Žurauskas, erupted after secret recordings of their telephone conversations were uploaded on YouTube. In the conversations, the diplomats share their personal insights into the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, the domestic situation in Turkmenistan and make remarks about Lithuanian leaders.
In the end of August, the Foreign Affairs Committee discussed the foreign minister's proposal to sack the ambassadors as having lost confidence of state leaders. The majority of the committee's members were against the proposal. Nevertheless, Linkevičius suggested that the government should support the recall, and President Dalia Grybauskaitė signed a relevant decree.
Under Lithuania's Constitution, ambassadors are recalled by the president in response to a relevant proposition from the government.
