US Dept. State Information
19 April 2006
VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY TO TRAVEL TO LITHUANIA
Washington — Vice President Cheney plans to travel to Lithuania, Kazakhstan and Croatia in early May, the White House announced April 19.
Cheney will travel first to Vilnius, Lithuania, to address a summit of leaders of the Baltic and Black Sea regions on May 4. “President Bush asked Vice President Cheney to join the leaders from Europe at the summit to emphasize the importance of the region’s democratic transformation and to advance the President’s Freedom Agenda,” the White House announcement said.
Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus is hosting the summit, which will include discussions on a range of regional issues. In addition to his address, the vice president is scheduled to meet bilaterally with leaders from the region, the White House said.
President Bush last met with Adamkus along with the presidents of Latvia and Estonia on May 7, 2005, in Riga, Latvia. (See related article.)
Bush became the first U.S. president to visit Lithuania in November 2002. (See related article.)
After the summit in Vilnius, Cheney will travel to Kazakhstan to meet with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev “to strengthen our bilateral relationship on the basis of our shared strategic interests and desire to promote democratic reform and economic development,” according to the White House announcement.
From Kazakhstan, Cheney plans to travel to Croatia to meet with Croatia’s leadership and to hold multilateral discussions with the leaders of the Adriatic Charter Countries: Croatia, Albania and Macedonia.
On May 2, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell and the foreign ministers of Albania, Croatia and Macedonia signed an agreement known as the Adriatic Charter. The pact was proposed jointly by the presidents of Albania, Croatia and Macedonia to President Bush at the NATO Prague Summit in November 2002 with the aim of reinforcing U.S. support for the alliance’s “Open Door” and underscoring the goal of fully integrating Albania, Croatia and Macedonia into Euro-Atlantic institutions. (See related fact sheet.)
The foreign ministers of the Adriatic Charter members most recently met in Washington, in February, along with representatives from Serbia-Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Another meeting is being planned for April 2006 in Brijuni, Croatia, which also would include the foreign and defense ministers of the Baltic countries.
(Distributed by the Bureau of International I
