Ažubalis of the opposition Conservatives said that he aimed to draw a line between domestic and foreign policy agendas during his term in office. He said he abstained in the 2010 vote on name-spelling because "foreign policy should not become hostage to home policy matters."
"The situation now is paradoxical – on the one hand, the minister put the issues of the Polish situation on the top of our foreign policies. On the other hand, he suggested at a meeting with the Lithuanian community in Poland that they should resolve all matters with the local administration," the former diplomacy chief said in an answer to BNS.
He noted that Valdemar Tomaševski, the leader of the Electoral Action of Poles in Lithuania, commended the rigid stance of Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski he demonstrated at a meeting with his Lithuanian counterpart.
In Ažubalis' words, the problems in Vilnius region "go beyond characters and street signs," they have to do with the vision of the region's social development. At the same time, he said he missed Poland's determination to take leadership in the region in "the implementation of military and energy security projects, defense of the principles of superiority of freedom, democracy and law in the Eastern Neighborhood and coping with old and new threats to the national security of Lithuania and Poland.
Lithuania's incumbent foreign minister, Linkevičius, made the apology to Polish dailies Rzeczpospolita and Gazeta Wyborcza prior to his last Thursday's visit to Poland.
"It is a big disgrace. President Lech Kaczynski was a good friend of Lithuania. Unfortunately, this happened during his visit. I was not a member of the parliament at the time but I'd like to apologize," the minister said in an interview published by the Rzeczpospolita daily last Thursday.
"I am so ashamed of what happened at the time. It's a painful lesson for us," Gazeta Wyborcza cited him as saying.
In April 2010, the Seimas of Lithuanian voted down a bill by the government of Andrius Kubilius on allowing to write Latin-based first and last names in ID documents in the original form without transcribing them according to Lithuanian phonetics.
