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“We continue to strengthen our strategic partnership. I appreciated the fundamental role of the United States in ensuring the security of Lithuania and the entire region. We also support the people of Belarus in their fight for democracy,” the minister wrote on Thursday in a network account social after meeting with the Secretary of State of the United States, Mike Pompeo.
PHOTO GALLERY. Meeting between Linas Linkevičius and the Secretary of the United States, Mike Pompeo
For his part, Morgan Ortagus, a spokesman for the US State Department, said Pompeo was grateful to Lithuania for its leadership in guaranteeing the independence and territorial integrity of Belarus, as well as the democratic rights of its people.
Belarus has been protesting for more than a month after the August 9 presidential elections, which were declared the winners by authoritarian leader Aliaksandr Lukashenko, who has ruled the country since 1994. The opposition and western countries consider these elections to be rigged .
Among other things, Lithuania and the United States signed a cooperation agreement on the development of fifth generation (5G) telecommunications infrastructure.
The US administration has been lobbying the Allies in recent years to prevent Chinese telecoms giant Huawei from participating in the development of 5G networks.
The United States has previously signed similar declarations with other Baltic countries and Poland. They agreed to assess whether technology providers are not controlled by foreign governments, where there is no independent judicial oversight.
In an interview with BNS in February this year, the US Ambassador to Lithuania, Robert Gilchrist, said that the United States hopes that Lithuania will address 5G security and assess the threats posed by China when implementing the technology.
Huawei, for its part, says it cares about cyber security and complies with international regulations in this area, and no government agency or outside organization owns Huawei’s shares or controls the company in any way.
More on the situation in Belarus, in a video report:
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