Lietuva in brief - 2004-02-26

President Rolandas Paksas' circle continued to define the impeachment process as a "coup." Speaking live on national radio Feb. 23, presidential adviser Gintaras Surkus dismissed the impeachment commission's conclusions and the parliamentary vote to start impeachment against the president as "yet another part of the coup." "The next step will be the assassination of President Rolandas Paksas," he stated.

Opposition lawmaker and post-independence executive Vytautas Landsbergis called for a law banning impeached officials from running for office again. Under current laws Paksas, if impeached, could stand for another term of office.

The daily Lietuvos Rytas reported that members of the Russian political consulting group Almax, which provided services to Paksas during his presidential campaign, were refused entry into Lithuania in early February. Consultants Anna Zatonskaya and Anatoly Potnin were denied visas from the consular section of Lithuania's embassy in Moscow.

In a statement circulated by his aviation company, Yuri Borisov, President Rolandas Paksas' largest campaign donor who was stripped of his Lithuanian citizenship in January, sarcastically criticized Lithuania's Parliament. "Allow me to thank... the entire Seimas for the wonderful job you have done collecting evidence against me," read the note.

Science and Education Minister Algirdas Monkevicius announced that two Lithuanian-language schools in northeastern Poland would remain open, contrary to earlier reports from the Polish government .

Major Saulius Paliulis, a student at NATO's Partnership for Peace program, saved his roommate, an Armenian lieutenant, from an Azerbaijani ax-murderer. Paliulis prevented the assailant, who had just killed another Armenian in their Budapest student hostel, from entering their room.