EU – Baltic States, Lithuania

The Minister highlighted the personal contribution of the admiral that allowed for Lithuanian NATO membership to become more practical. Trainings arranged under realistic scenarios were started in the Baltic region.

"It was agreed to continue developing the cooperation between Lithuania and the U.S. Forces in Europe. One of the priorities in this area is the cooperation between the Special Forces of both countries," said Jukneviciene after the meeting, Wednesday.

The defence minister assured the admiral that Lithuania will only withdraw from Afghanistan together with the allies. "My message to the admiral was the same. We came together and we will leave together," said Jukneviciene.

Regarding the NATO air-policing mission Jukneviciene noted that considerable effort is put to improve the host country's support for air policing mission, to improve the infrastructure, therefore the necessary funds were moved from 2013 to this year, reported LETA/ELTA.

Starvidis welcomed a Vilnius-based NATO Energy Security Center of Excellence. He said that the activity of this centre is very important to the allies in terms of energy security of military training and the energy efficiency aspects.

 During the meeting between Commander of Lithuanian Armed Forces Lieutenant General Arvydas Pocius and James Starvidis Tuesday, a cooperation with NATO and the U.S. forces in Europe was discussed in more details.

This is already the fourth visit of the Supreme Allied Commander for Europe. Previous visits were in 2005, 2007 and 2010.