Athens , 30 June 2009

MR. V. USAKAS: OK, so I just wanted to say that it was my great pleasure to welcome the Foreign Minister of Greece, Dora Bakoyanni, to Lithuania for the first time. We are very pleased to host the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly during the chairmanship of Greece, and Lithuania will become a member of Troika next year and will take over from Kazakhstan in 2011.

I am also very glad to welcome my good friend Dora in Lithuania at a time when we are celebrating millennium of the country, and Vilnius is a European Capital of Culture.

So we discussed a whole range of issues, starting first and foremost from the Corfu ministerial meeting. I want to extend our gratitude to the Greek government for the hospitality you extended for 56 foreign ministers, where we launched the Corfu process. And we look forward to continue both during the Kazakh presidency and most likely the Lithuanian chairmanship. We strongly believe that the fundamentals of European security architecture are sound and strong. NATO, EU, OSCE and Council of Europe have proven their value added for 50-60 years. The best illustration is the enlargement of the EU from 9 to 27 and from 12 to 28 member states.

And we are looking forward to discuss with our colleagues in Russia, with Minister Sergey Lavrov and others, how can we make best use of existing commitments and how the countries should make additional effort to ensure that the commitments taken as a member of the OSCE are fully implemented, and see how can we improve probably certain aspects of the institutional work.

So we really appreciate our friendship with Greece. We will also be, as a Troika, both within the EU in 2013 and 2014. And Dora, welcome to Lithuania.

MS. D. BAKOYANNIS: Thank you very much. I would like to say that it is a great pleasure to be in Lithuania for the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and at the same time for bilateral talks with my Lithuanian counterpart. Greece and Lithuania are on the two opposite corners of the European Union, but we have an excellent cooperation on all levels, both bilaterally and as members of the European Union.

It is our objective to support the OSCE – Lithuania will take over from Kazakhstan at the helm of the Organisation – and it is our objective to promote jointly the “Corfu process”, a process that started in Corfu and its continuation will depend on our determination to turn the page.

JOURNALIST: Could you please tell us your point of view about the security architecture?

MS. D. BAKOYANNIS: Well, let me first express my great joy to visit Vilnius. It is the first time and I must congratulate you. It is a wonderful city.

With my Lithuanian colleague we are working together on many issues inside the European Union and in NATO, and we want to have a very close cooperation in the OSCE.

We started, as you know, the Greek chair, the so-called Corfu process in Corfu before yesterday. What we want to achieve is to have an open, frank dialogue about the European architecture of the future.

As Vygaudus already stated, we are happy with what we have, but most of our colleagues agree that we have also to understand the concerns of other OSCE members, meet them, and try to have a better structured dialogue for the future.

That is what we are going to do in the OSCE. We are hoping that we will get an agreement for a structured dialogue, for the format and the context, in the Ministerial in Athens in December.

JOURNALIST: Will the Greek presidency do something that the OSCE mission in Georgia would continue in the future?

MS. D. BAKOYANNI: This was one of our main goals when we started the presidency. We worked very hard trying to get a consensus on a new mandate for the mission in Georgia. Unfortunately, we did not achieve our goal, so technically the mission is closed from today – it’s the 30th of June. So it will not be there any more.

We have our proposals on the table, and in case we feel that we might achieve a consensus, we will of course reopen the negotiations. We are not giving up. Thank you.