Lithuanian leaders too busy to meet with visiting Polish president

Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė is still in Croatia on Tuesday. Meanwhile Speaker of the Lithuanian Seimas Loreta Graužinienė says she will not be able to meet with Komorowski due to her busy schedules.

“It seems not to be a state-level visit. We’ll have the last day of the parliamentary session and we need to finish it under the Constitution and the Statute of the Seimas. So I just can’t do it due to work issues,” Graužinienė told BNS on Monday.

Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevičius was not planning to meet Komorowski either at first.

“Yesterday and today we were discussing what to do as the prime minister was ready to meet but the Seimas agenda tomorrow is very busy,” the prime minister’s spokeswoman Evelina Butkutė-Lazdauskienė told BNS.

However, Butkevičius later said he would come to Kaunas to congratulate Komorowski.

“I want to go to Kaunas and congratulate Polish President Komorowski as today he will receive an honorary doctorate from Vytautas Magnus University. Although all members of the Seimas had been requested to be present in the parliament in the morning, I think certain issues can be adopted a bit later,” the Lithuanian prime minister said.

Political scientist Laurynas Kasčiūnas of the Institute of International Relations and Political Science at Vilnius University expressed surprise at the situation.

“It’s strange. That’s the word we could use. I hope such non-meetings are not intentional despite the fact that he [Komorowski] is an outgoing president,” he told BNS.

Komorowski’s presidential term expires on August 6. He will be replaced by Andrzej Duda.