Lithuania has been, and remains, Israel’s “voice” in the international arena, the Baltic state’s prime minister, Algirdas Butkevicius, told The Jerusalem Post Wednesday on the final day of a two-day visit.
Lithuania is nearing the end of its two-year stint on the UN Security Council, and Butkevicius said that during this period, the “security of Israel” was one of Vilnius’s main priorities.
Lithuania supported Israel on a number of key votes in the Security Council and the UN over the past year, including abstaining – rather than voting for the Palestinians, as did fellow EU states France and Luxembourg – when the Palestinian Authority failed to gain the support of nine states needed to pass a Security Council resolution dictating a full Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines.