Adamkus presents Bush with Lithuania's highest civilian honor

BUCHAREST, November 23 (News Agencies) – U.S. President George W. Bush arrived in Bucharest on Saturday at the start of a four-hour visit to Romania, officials said.

Bush's brief visit follows NATO's decision to extend a membership invitation to Romania, a former Communist country strategically located in southeast Europe.

The high point of the visit is to be a speech delivered by Bush in Bucharest's Revolution Square, which was the focal point of the insurrection that overthrew the Communist regime in December 1989.

Bush arrived in Bucharest from the Baltic state of Lithuania, which was also invited to join the transatlantic military alliance at a summit in the Czech capital Prague on Thursday and Friday.

The presidents of the Baltic states said an invitation to join NATO and a visit by U.S. president George W. Bush to Lithuania opened a new era in their countries' history and pledged support for NATO's action "in defense of freedom and peace in the world".

"Today we have closed the page of misery, occupations and isolation in our history," Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus told a news conference.

The Baltic presidents said they were ready to contribute to NATO activities and if asked, to join the alliance's efforts to combat terrorism.

"In our talks with the U.S. president, I expressed Lithuania's full support for U.S. foreign policy and assured him Lithuania will stand shoulder to shoulder with the U.S. in the fight for our common human values," Adamkus said.

"We intend to be full-fledged members of the alliance. And it will be a part of our commitment to do everything needed to be done to defend freedom and peace in the world," Vike-Freiberga added.

Asked whether Estonia would join a military campaign against Iraq, whose leader Saddam Hussein Bush is seeking to topple, Ruutel said Tallinn's position was that the invitation to join NATO meant "a commitment and duty to participate in all NATO operations".

Adamkus said he hoped the Baltic states' relations with Moscow, their former ruler in Soviet times, would not be damaged by their joining NATO.

"The U.S. president assured me that the Russian president, [Vladimir] Putin, quietly accepted the enlargement of NATO," Adamkus said. In Lithuania, Bush held a 30-minute talk with the three Baltic presidents.

Meanwhile, Bush, making the first ever visit to Lithuania by a U.S. president, gratefully accepted the Baltic state's highest award Saturday and said its accession to NATO would "invigorate" the alliance.

"After all Lithuania represents to me courage of people standing in the face of tyranny and demanding freedom," said Bush, who stood stiffly beside Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus at the ceremony but was obviously pleased, said AFP.

Bush then swept off to Bucharest, where he was to celebrate the membership invitation NATO has extended to Romania and Bulgaria, along with Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia and Slovenia.

The seven former Communist states are expected, in theory, to join the transatlantic military alliance at its 2004 summit.

Adamkus declared himself "overjoyed" at the U.S. leader's visit and NATO's vote Thursday to admit the Baltic republic -- which won independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 -- into an alliance originally conceived to deter Moscow.

"[The vote] proves that we are ready to join the free world and fulfill all the responsibilities [of membership]," said Adamkus.

The Lithuanian leader then formally bestowed the Cross of the Order of Vytautas the Great, Lithuania's highest award, on the U.S. president, pinning its ornate star medal just below the U.S. flag pin shining from his guest's lapel.

"The NATO alliance will be stronger with Lithuania's presence. Not only will you help militarily but, as importantly, your presence will help lift and invigorate the spirit of the European-North Atlantic alliance," said Bush.

The U.S. president later faced one of the largest crowds of his presidency in a speech in the Town Hall square before cheering Lithuanians, who waved flags of both nations. According to white House estimates, between 25,000 and 50,000 people attended.

"You have known cruel oppression and withstood it," Bush declared. "Because you have paid its cost, you know the value of human freedom."

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization "is being tested again by new and terrible dangers," Bush said.

"Like the Nazis and the Communists before them, the terrorists seek to end lives," he said. "Like the Nazis and the Communists before them, they will be opposed by free nations, and the terrorists will be defeated."

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