National Defence committee  Thank you very much indeed. I am very happy to be here among friends and allies. I would very much like to invite you to my country to visit. It's better to see once than to listen ten times. Please come; I think it's a very important venture.

National Defence committee  According to our partners, we Lithuanians are doing more proportionally than such medium-sized or smaller countries can do. We are leading PRTs in the very centre of Afghanistan, in Ghor province, and we are leading that alone. For my ministry it is a great challenge, and we are

National Defence committee  Of course I am in favour. As Minister of Defence, I have to say that for me it's the main concern. As Minister of Defence to have this budget that we have now in Lithuania, it's not enough. The U.S. pays for 75% of NATO's spending. Of course it's a gap, a huge gap. The gap is in

National Defence committee  Collective defence—NATO must reaffirm its readiness to the four major joint operations. This is critical for the implementation of COPs, the contingency operational planning that we are doing now. Of course our interest is to have NATO air policing long term. You know that in th

National Defence committee  I mentioned already one very important example we are involved in. It's the Baltic air policing mission. Americans are very active in this mission. Our partners help us to protect our airspace, protecting all three Baltic countries. In this austerity period, there is no other way

National Defence committee  That load is becoming smaller and smaller. Communications are becoming most important. One more concrete example is training, military exercises, your participation in European parts of NATO with your armed forces, your troops in military exercises in our region, ours also.... O

National Defence committee  What you asked about Kaliningrad and the missile defence issue is closely related to what General Makarov made a presentation in Moscow about. My political director, Mr. Vaidotas Urbelis, attended this, I would say, propaganda-style meeting in Moscow a few weeks ago. They made th

National Defence committee  On the Russian Federation, we have a normal diplomatic relationship, recognizing we are both independent states. We have quite an intensive economic relationship. Our agriculture exports a lot of products to Russia, and they are very welcome in Russia because they're very good qu

National Defence committee  Thank you very much. Thank you for those good words. On the threats, I would like to name them maybe more as challenges, not threats. We don't say that we have today direct military threats. I just spoke about increasing militarization in an environment that has been changing du

National Defence committee  Of course we have a lot in common—anti-piracy activities, for example. We even made several proposals ourselves to Russia for military corporation—

National Defence committee  I'm sorry...?

National Defence committee  We need mutual understanding, of course, among NATO and Russia, first of all. We have to have the common will to cooperate. It's very difficult to answer your question if one partner has no such will for cooperation. So I don't think that we have to “bargain”—how to say—with Ru

National Defence committee  Thank you very much for your question. On smart defence related to the air policing mission, we decided to increase our host nation support, keeping in mind that this mission has to be smart for everybody—smart for us, in getting partnership from our partners, and for our partn

National Defence committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, colleagues, and members of Parliament. I have been a member of the National Security and Defence Committee in my parliament since 1996, so for me, your discussions are very familiar. First of all, I would like to say thank you very much to Cana