Conservatives summon minister over unanswered foreign policy questions

Lithuania’s opposition Homeland Union Lithuanian Christian Democrats faction is dissatisfied with Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys’s answers on the country’s diplomatic direction and will invite him to a faction meeting, LRT reported.

The faction said Budrys had not provided detailed answers to every question submitted to him officially, including questions about the breakdown of high-level political dialogue with the United States and further efforts to persuade Washington to invite Ukraine to join NATO together with Lithuania.

The questions also concerned joint action by the United States and Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states, as well as the end of an annual strategic dialogue with the United States on cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region. The dialogue had been in place until 2024 and involved the US National Security Council, the State Department and the Commerce Department. In November 2021, Lithuania signed a 600 million dollar memorandum with the US Export-Import Bank on cooperation in goods and services.

The faction said the minister had also failed to address the possible impact of negotiations with China on relations with the United States, including the administration and Congress. It said he had ignored questions about China’s specific demands, the potential geopolitical, economic and security consequences of the talks for Lithuania, China’s decisive role in supporting Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, and the talks’ possible impact on Lithuania’s relations with Russia and Belarus.

The unanswered questions also covered different European Union countries’ approaches to China and Taiwan and the potential effect of negotiations with China on EU unity.

“Since many of the questions registered on July 28 were not answered, we decided to invite Minister K. Budrys to speak with the entire TS-LKD faction and hear in person the answers to the questions we did not receive in writing,” said conservative Žygimantas Pavilionis, deputy chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Lithuanian parliament.

Pavilionis asked Budrys in late July to respond to questions about Lithuania’s diplomatic course, including what he described as stagnation in relations with the United States and efforts to normalise bilateral relations with China.