New appointments in the Baltics

On May 2 Eriks Rusis became the new board chairman of one of Latvia's largest construction companies, Kalnozols un Partneri. Rusis, 46, was born and educated in the United States and has worked in Germany for many years. He had been the president of the German subsidiary of the Japanese hi-tech company Fanuac. Since 1999, Rusis has been the representative for the U.S. company Ablize in Latvia, as well as a consultant for the United Nations Development Program in Latvia.

Rusis has graduated from the Latvian Gymnasium in Munster, Germany, as well as the University of Washington and the American Graduate School of International Management in Arizona.

On June 11 the newly appointed Lithuanian Ambassador to Poland Darius De-gutis presented his credentials to Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski. In his conversation with Degutis, Kwasniewski reiterated Poland's support in inviting Lithuania into NATO in 2002 and called the strategic Lithuanian-Polish partnership "an example to all of Europe."

Degutis and Kwasniewski acknowledged that problems related to the education of national minorities and the writing of a person's full name in his or her native tongue were not yet fully solved.

Since former Lithuanian Ambassador in Warsaw Antanas Valionis was appointed foreign minister, at the end of 2000, it's taken eight months for the new Lithuanian ambassador to be named. Darius Degutis, 37, is a career diplomat who had served for three years as adviser at the Lithuanian Embassy in the U.S.A. before his present appointment to the Lithuanian ambassadorship.