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Lithuania, Romania to seek enhanced NATO presence along EU eastern border

Xinhua, May 19, 2016 Adjust font size:

Lithuania and Romania have agreed to cooperate to achieve more NATO involvement in the security situation in Eastern Europe, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite said on Wednesday after meeting with her Romanian counterpart Klaus Werner Iohannis.

"Lithuania and Romania are sincere friends, strong European Union (EU) partners and NATO allies; today we share a common goal to strengthen the defense of NATO's Eastern border," Grybauskaite was quoted as saying in a statement released by the presidency.

The Romanian president is on a state visit to Lithuania to celebrate the 25th anniversary of reestablished diplomatic relations between the two countries.

The presidents' meeting placed special emphasis on stepping up defense and preparations for the upcoming NATO summit in Warsaw.

According to the statement, when in Warsaw, Lithuania and Romania will seek NATO's enhanced presence along the whole Eastern border of the alliance, as well as the deployment of NATO's forward forces in the region. Lithuania also stressed it supported Romania's need to strengthen NATO's maritime forces in the Black Sea.

The two leaders also discussed the refugee crisis that Europe has been going through over the past year. According to Iohannis, proactive decisions should be made to solve the European migrant crisis, rather than imposing sanctions on countries which refuse to house refugees. They agreed that protection of the external borders in the region remained an essential factor in managing massive migration flows.

The European Commission recently proposed imposing financial penalties on EU member states refusing to take in their share of asylum seekers. The bloc's executive body is planning a sanction of 250,000 euros (280,587 U.S. dollars) per asylum seeker.

"Generally, I think that the right decision would be finding proactive solutions rather than concentrating on sanctions as the latter doesn't solve the problem," Iohannis was quoted as saying by local media while speaking during a joint press conference with Lithuania's president.

Both presidents agreed that measures were needed on an EU scale; however, they must be voluntary and based on agreement rather than on forced quotas or penalties.

According to the Lithuanian presidency, economic cooperation between Lithuania and Romania is increasing. Trade has doubled over the past five years and more and more Romanians visit Lithuania. Endit