Vilnius letter
The Vilnius letter was a declaration of support for the United States' ambition of a régime change in Iraq by means of an invasion under the pretext of the Iraq disarmament crisis.
The letter of the eight on 30 January, 2003, that according to many observers torpedoed the European Union's cautious position, was after Colin Powell's assertion in the UN Security Council of Iraq's continuous developing of illicit weapons on 6 February followed by a letter from the Vilnius group comprised of Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia, supporting an US military intervention in Iraq. The letter expressed confidence in the evidence presented by Powell and agreed that Iraq had clearly violated UN resolutions, and that the countries from the Vilnius group were supporters of a US military intervention in Iraq.
The Vilnius letter was a public rebuke by ten candidates for EU-membership of EU's Common Security Policy, and more specifically EU's position in the Iraq disarmament crisis, by expressing support for the, by then inevitable, 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States. The signatories were later dubbed "New Europe" by the US Defence Minister Rumsfeld, and were to receive emotional criticism from the French president Chirac. These events are generally seen as a low-water mark of the European Union's attempted Common Security Policy.
According to revelations in the respective national newspapers, the US envoy Bruce P. Jackson was the architect behind both the letter of the eight and the Vilnius letter. He arranged a meeting in the Lithuanian embassy in Washington, where the foreign ministers of all ten countries participated. The text had been proposed in advance, but according to the press, it was Bruce Jackson who convinced the participants to accept the proposal and to disregard efforts by Bulgaria, then a rotating member of the UN Security Council, to alter the text. Since the early 1990s, Bruce Jackson has been an informal advisor to Central European government, telling them what to do in order to get accepted into NATO. Now he convinced the foreign ministers of the Vilnius ten that if they wanted to be accepted in NATO they better sign the letter. Their support for the US in this international conflict was said to give them much better chances in the US Congress when it was to vote on accepting those countries into NATO.
Criticism
Critical European observers wrote, that the East European states tended to exchange their earlier client-relation to the Soviet Union with becoming satellites of the United States. It seemed obvious that the Central European governments in reality were seeing their relation to the US as much more important than their relations within the European Union. Their admission to the EU was not jeopardized, but US promises, not the least in terms of funding of future military improvements, may have been at stake; and the military might of the US seemed a much stronger protection against future threats from a revanchist Russia. In this context, the Central European states emphasized their commitment to traditional Western European and American values as free trade, economical non-interventionism, democracy -- and also their participation in the War against terrorism. It is less clear to what degree these governments really believed Iraq to be the incarnation of Islamic fundamentalism, similar to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, or if this was considered empty rhetoric aimed at concealing the geo-political motives behind the war — rhetoric of a kind they were all too used to from their earlier intimate contacts with the Soviet Union. The letter referred to the "compelling evidence" presented by US secretary of state Colin Powell to the UN, and added: "Our countries understand the dangers posed by tyranny and the special responsibility of democracies to defend our shared values." Critics argued that the signatories instead of defended shared values undermined the authority of International Law and the United Nations.
It was also proposed that this letter was a clever plan devised by the US to undermine the growing strength and influence of the European Union in general, and in particular the position of France and Germany, that had been considerably strengthened after the fall of Communism and the German re-unification, and also to increase US power over the European Union with the former Soviet satellites as instruments.
Central European press had pointed out the foreign policy problem their governments faced wasn?t primarily connected with Iraq but with the clash between the regional powers of the European Continent; Russia, France, and Germany on one side, and the Atlantic powers, the United States and the United Kingdom, on the other. Numerous critics argued that by signing the Vilnius letter, they were responsible for aggravating the crisis in the European Union, and putting national security at danger.
Background
14 January 2003 Jack Straw, Foreign Minister of the United Kingdom, announced that London would not wait for an UN decision to attack Iraq and would act on its own. Meanwhile two other countries, Poland and Macedonia offered to participate in the conflict with troops.
27 January 2003 Hans Blix presented the UN Security Council with the report that the inspectors had been granted access to every site they needed to inspect, but ?It is not enough to open doors,? he said.
28 January 2003 George W. Bush delivered his ?State of the Union? speech to the US congress, alleging that Saddam Hussein had ties with terrorist organizations, and that Iraq was a serious threat against the security of the US citizens as the world?s most dangerous producer of weapons of mass-destruction.
