Linas Antanas Linkevičius

Linas Antanas Linkevičius (born 6 January 1961) is a Lithuanian politician of the Social Democratic Labour Party.

Linas Linkevičius MP
Minister of Foreign Affairs
In office 13 December 2012 – 11 December 2020
Prime Minister	Algirdas Butkevičius Saulius Skvernelis
Preceded by	Audronius Ažubalis
Succeeded by	Gabrielius Landsbergis
Minister of National Defence
In office 26 October 2000 – 14 December 2004
Prime Minister	Rolandas Paksas Eugenijus Gentvilas (Acting) Algirdas Brazauskas
Preceded by	Česlovas Stankevičius
Succeeded by	Gediminas Kirkilas
In office 28 October 1993 – 27 November 1996
Prime Minister	Adolfas Šleževičius Laurynas Stankevičius
Preceded by	Audrius Butkevičius
Succeeded by	Česlovas Stankevičius
Personal details
Born	6 January 1961 Vilnius, Lithuanian SSR, Soviet Union (now Lithuania)
Political party	Democratic Labour Party (1990-2001) Social Democratic Labour Party (2001-2017) Independent (2017-present)
Alma mater	Kaunas University of Technology

Political career

Linkevičius served as minister of National Defence from 1993 to 1996 and from 2000 to 2004. He was the Lithuanian Permanent Representative to NATO from 2005 until 2011.

Minister of Foreign Affairs, 2012–2020

Linkevičius with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, 28 May 2016

In December 2012 Linkevičius was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs.[1]

Throughout his term as foreign minister, Linkevičius has corroborated Lithuania's status within many international and multilateral entities and organizations, including the United Nations, NATO and the European Union. He managed to establish strong personal ties with prominent international leaders like Laurent Fabius, Angela Merkel and Shimon Peres, whom he invited to be an advisor to the project of the Jewish Memorial Center in Vilnius, on the site of the Great Synagogue of Vilna.

He is known to be a partisan of international collaboration in fields like science, sport and the arts, in order to strengthen the image of Lithuania and to enhance its global standpoint.

In 2015, Linkevičius visited Saudi Arabia and met with the King Salman of Saudi Arabia. He said back then "I think that after this visit our relations will become much more systematic."[2]

Linkevičius expressed deep concern over the escalation of hostilities in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh and called on Armenia and Azerbaijan to immediately halt fighting and progress towards a peaceful resolution.[3]

On 9 March 2018, after Poland's referral to the European Court of Justice, leaders of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia expressed their support for Poland over the Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union.[4] On 13 September 2018, Linkevičius has re-confirmed Lithuania's stand: "We will oppose the sanctions against Poland. This dialogue is very complicated but we believe that the result will be positive."[5]

Other activities

• European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), Member[6]

Political positions

Linkevičius with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in 2020

Linkevičius has been a constant opponent within the European Union and NATO of compromises with Russia over Ukraine. When measures to re-engage Russia were discussed in Brussels, in January 2015, he strongly objected. "I do not think we should think how to re-engage; Russia should think how to re-engage . . . I see no reason why we should invent something," he was quoted. (Financial Times, January 20, 2015)

"We can't trust a single word of the Russian leadership. [Russia's] statements are worthless," he was quoted as saying in a public speech in March 2015, scolding some of his European Union colleagues for being detached from "reality" in seeking to soften or unroll some of the sanctions against Russia. (Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2015)

In a newspaper column, in June 2015, Linkevičius warned Lithuania's NATO partners against regression to a mid-Cold War-like détente with Russia, as the one experienced in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Russia, he wrote, no longer poses "a serious alternative to Western liberal democracy", and its adversarial relations with the rest of Europe are "just a Kremlin construct, invented by modern Russia to cover failures of reform."(Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2015)

Referring to Lithuania as a "frontline state" with Russia, he urged in that column that "NATO’s capabilities should be based on sober threat analyses, not illusions. Anything that the Kremlin perceives as weakness will encourage it to press ahead."

See also

• List of foreign ministers in 2017
• List of current foreign ministers

References

1. Grybauskaite approves new government
2. "Lithuania to intensify cooperation with Saudi Arabia". Lithuania Tribune. 17 February 2016.
3. "Linkevičius: Lithuania calls on Armenia and Azerbaijan to stop military action". Delfi. 28 September 2020. Archived from the original on 1 October 2020.
4. "Baltic states against EU sanctions on Poland EURACTIV.com". www.euractiv.com. 13 March 2018.
5. "UAWire - Lithuania promises not support the EU sanctions against Poland". uawire.org. 14 September 2018.
6. Members European Council on Foreign Relations.

External links

• Short biography