New Delhi: After a diplomatic showdown with China in 2022, Lithuania is now planning to expand its ties with other Asian countries, mainly with India, and it supports New Delhi's territorial integrity and sovereignty against “transgressor” Beijing, according to Ambassador of Lithuania to India Diana Mickeviciene.
In an exclusive interview to ABP Live, Ambassador Mickeviciene, who was Lithuania’s envoy to China prior to her posting in India, said Vilnius is keen to expand business and economic, political, security and cultural ties with New Delhi.
“Today’s government in Lithuania has very clearly prioritised Asia and Pacific and sees a very important role of India in that attitude and we have in fact been quite slow in coming to Asia, I have to admit. We have existential priorities of joining the European Union and then NATO was a very important element. We feel secure in becoming a NATO member,” she said.
India will soon be opening its embassy in Lithuania for the first time. Indian diplomats have already left for Vilnius to set up a full-fledged diplomatic mission there. The decision was taken in April 2022.
Glad to meet the Indian diplomats who are landing in #Vilnius shortly to start opening procedures of the Indian mission in Lithuania🇱🇹🇮🇳
We look forward to seeing the fully functioned Embassy in the upcoming months. Wishing all the best in a smooth start-off!🙏 pic.twitter.com/QAtNACbGaT
— Lithuania in India (@LTEmbassyDelhi) March 29, 2023
According to the Lithuanian envoy, China is acting as “transgressor”, just like Russia is acting against Ukraine.
On the ongoing India-China border tensions, Mickeviciene, who is also an Indologist, said: “We support India’s territorial integrity and we think that any unilateral steps that try to put risk, try to derail the territorial integrity are totally unacceptable in the 21st century.”
Referring to the speech made by Japan Prime Minister Fumio Kishida during his recent visit to India, Mickeviciene said, wherever someone unilaterally violates borders it should be unacceptable. “Because ultimately, one transgressor gets inspired by another transgression. If there is no pushback then there is encouragement, an endorsement – something which we are seeing now in Russia’s war against Ukraine.”
Last year, ties between Lithuania and China nosedived with Vilnius exiting out of China-led initiative called 17+1 and it also allowed Taiwan to set up a representative office in the Lithuanian capital, which led to the downgrading of diplomatic ties resulting in the recall of ambassadors from each other’s countries.
“Unfortunately we had to cease the functioning of our embassy in Beijing. What happened was not an off event. It was a series of unacceptable pressures that we felt from China and them bluntly interfering in our domestic affairs,” she said.
Lithuania also thinks that it is “concerning and worrying” even as the bonhomie between Beijing and Moscow deepens, which according to the envoy reached its pinnacle when Russian President Vladimir Putin visited China for the Winter Olympics last year and met Chinese President Xi Jinping.
‘We Want To Engage With India; China Has Drained Us’
According to the Lithuanian Ambassador, her country will now engage with India on high-tech segments, particularly focussing on laser technology, semiconductors and biotechnology, among others.
“India is looked at very positively (in Lithuania) … There are several areas where we would love to work with India. Our trade is much below potential … With the latest geopolitical changes and with supply chains moving and restructuring themselves, I see a very good future for us falling into a new supply chain,” she said.
Mickeviciene added: “India is becoming a hub for a lot of relocation for manufacturing from China. We are good at high-tech manufacturing, which means equipment will be traveling from factories in Lithuania to assembly factories in India.”
She said Lithuania has expertise in laser technology, especially high precision lasers for which they have teamed up with Apple’s iPhone.
“We want more Indian companies to come. Now that the Indian Embassy will be there, we hope more and more companies will come. We finally placed ourselves on your maps. We can also be a gateway to the European market,” Mickeviciene added.
She said even though Lithuania established diplomatic ties with India quite late, it will nevertheless focus more on India now.
“Time has come to look East now. We have worked with Asia before but China was looming as the largest possibility and largest opportunity. So I think all our resources and energies are being drained by working with China. At the end of the day we thought it was not justified. Our trade (with China) didn’t grow as we expected and some other problems started,” she said.
In its efforts to widen its footprint in Asia, Lithuania also signed a strategic partnership with Japan in 2022 because both share the same vision for security and also opened embassies in South Korea and Singapore.
“So, of course, India falls into that puzzle as a very important global power, a global actor with which we feel we need to engage. That understanding though dawned on us pretty recently, like three-four years ago. But it’s never late. We are seeing so many tectonic changes so it is for us to take it (ties with India) forward,” Ambassador Mickeviciene added.
She stressed, “This is Asia’s age… We also need to make sure that the rules are there and that we are engaged based on basic rules of international order.”
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