Lithuania’s President Dalia Graybauskaite has send a strong signal to the Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Vygaudas Usackas that she is not satisfied with his style of work.  In interview for the TV3 station broadcasted on 3 January the President said that the Minister ‘doesn’t always hear what she’s saying’.  This strong statement could indicate that the Minister Usackas is potentially in trouble.

According to Grybauskaite the Presidential Palace was sending signals to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a month suggesting to act on Lithuania’s ambassador to Georgia Mecys Laurinkus.  After those suggestions were ignored by the Ministry in middle of December President Grybauskaite came out with a public statement asking the Government to recall ambassador Laurinkus within 24 hours.

According to Grybauskaite, the foreign minister should have dealt with the matter in a more timely manner.  Grybauskaite said in the interview to TV 3, “This goes to show that the foreign minister doesn’t always hear what the president is saying, and I reminded him that he has to listen, because this is my constitutional right, and foreign ministers have to hear what the president is saying.”

Eventually, the Government issued decree to recall the former security chief from the ambassadorial post at the end of January.  Grybauskaite explained her decision stating that a diplomat who is into politicizing should choose a different profession.

The Minister Usackas has also got on the wrong side of the President Grybauskaite after he stated that the conclusions of a probe into Lithuania’s CIA prison allegations did not establish transportation of suspected terrorists across the Lithuanian territory and that the country hosted a CIA prison.

The Minister Usackas said to BNS, “I believe the most important message to the world is that the committee did not find that CIA detainees were transported via or to the territory of Lithuania or that it hosted CIA prisons.  The conclusions speak about presumptions, but what is the most important to me is the conclusion, and the key message to the world is absence of facts and information to corroborate presence of a CIA prison in Lithuania.”

Meanwhile Gybauskaite disagreed with the Minister and said in the interview, “If this person, this minister, had more information than the committee managed to come across, he should have given his testimony and there’s a respective responsibility for hiding information,” Grybauskaite spoke in the interview.

Asked, whether this means that the president doesn’t trust Usackas, she said “it means that the minister also has to think before making public statements.”

The parliamentary National Security and Defence Committee said in its conclusions of a probe into Lithuania’s CIA prison allegations that Lithuania had the necessary preconditions for equipping secret CIA prisons, also for transporting, bringing CIA detainees in and out of the country, however noting it couldn’t determine whether these conditions were made use of in Lithuania.

The conclusions also note that the Prime ministers or presidents of Lithuania were not been informed properly on the issue; the only people to have been well aware of ongoing secret missions were several high-ranking VSD officials, including Dainius Dabasinskas, Mecys Laurinkus, and Arvydas Pocius.