RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
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RFE/RL NEWSLINE Vol. 3, No. 36, 22 February 1999

POLAND TO SUPPORT VILNIUS'S NATO BID. Visiting Polish
President Aleksander Kwasniewski assured his Lithuanian
counterpart, Valdas Adamkus, on 19 February that once it
becomes a member of NATO, Poland will lobby for the
membership of neighboring Lithuania in the alliance, ELTA
reported. Kwasniewski said that the three new NATO members--
Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic--will make clear
their position on NATO's "open-door" policy at the Washington
summit in April. "Warsaw thinks that [there] should be a
concrete statement on the continuity of the alliance's
enlargement to include the Baltic countries or at least one
of them," Kwasniewski said. JC

'HUNGARIAN-HUNGARIAN' DIALOGUE TO HAVE INSTITUTIONALIZED
FRAMEWORK. Representatives of Hungarian parliamentary parties
and ethnic Hungarian organizations abroad agreed in Budapest
on 20 February to set up the Hungarian Permanent Conference.
That body will serve as an institutionalized forum to
maintain dialogue between Hungary and Hungarians abroad.
Participants in the meeting signed a statement drawing the
international community's attention to the "unfairness" of
neglecting the interests of Vojvodina's Hungarians in
proposals on settling the Yugoslav crisis. Foreign Minister
Janos Martonyi told the gathering that while millions of
ethnic Hungarians living outside the country will be helped
by Hungary's accession to EU and NATO, they will not be
granted dual citizenship. MSZ


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