Azerbaijan, Baku, Aug. 5 / Trend E.Tariverdiyeva /
Alleged conversations among Lithuanian diplomats leaked to youtube.com is a provocation aimed against Lithuania and its presidency over the European Union (EU) Council, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė said, 15min.lt agency reported.
In her opinion, it is also a lesson and an impetus for the Lithuanian diplomatic service to improve its performance.
"My opinion of the situation is dual. First of all, I view it as a provocation in the sense that conversations that were not intended for public access went public. It is indeed a provocation against Lithuania and its EU presidency, which is holding the Eastern Partnership summit, and the event will involve one of the countries that was discussed," the president told journalists in Telšiai, western Lithuania, on Sunday.
Grybauskaitė said that the content of the leaked conversations was highly unprofessional.
"On the other hand, I see the conversations as highly unprofessional and a sign of immaturity of the diplomatic service. If there was no such content to begin with, provocations would not be possible. I think it will serve as a good lesson for the entire service to enhance its performance," she added.
On Friday, the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry confirmed to BNS that it received a resignation request from Lithuania's Ambassador to Azerbaijan Artūras Žurauskas. Ambassador to Hungary Renatas Juška has also been summoned to Vilnius in the framework of the probe into the incident.
The Ministry's General Inspection has began an investigation into the audio recordings made public on youtube.com, presumably featuring Lithuanian diplomats.
On July 8, recordings of three phone conversations (4 parts of the records in total) were published on youtube.com. The conversations allegedly involve Lithuanian diplomats Zenonas Kumetaitis, deputy director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Eastern Neighborhood Policy Department, Lithuania's Ambassador to Hungary Renatas Juška, Lithuania's Ambassador to Azerbaijan Artūras Žurauskas, and Gediminas Kasputis, an official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In one of the records, Žurauskas is said to be talking to a Lithuanian businessman identified as Kęstutis.
All records feature English subtitles.
The two recordings mention relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Lithuania is holding EU Council presidency in the second half of the year, and the Eastern Partnership summit scheduled for November is one of the key presidency events. The Eastern Partnership initiative covers bilateral and multilateral EU cooperation with Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Moldova, promoting closer ties of the Eastern European nations with the EU.
Azerbaijan's Ambassador to Lithuania Hasan Mammadzada has commented that the leaked diplomatic conversations are a provocation against Azerbaijan and Lithuania.
Lithuania's Foreign Minister Linas Linkevičius has dismissed the incident as information provocation.