Latvian president urges global solutions

Latvian
president urges global solutions
…………………………………………………………………

BY B.J. ALMOND
Rice News Staff

“International
terrorism has grown into a global challenge that requires
global solutions,” the president of the Republic of
Latvia told Rice students and other guests at the James
A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy Feb. 7.

“It requires
close cooperation between all countries, both great and
small,” said Vaira Vike-Freiberga, who became the Latvian
president in 1999. She stressed the need to strengthen the
trans-Atlantic partnership.

“The shattering
terrorist attacks of Sept. 11,” she said, “have
pressed us to accept the new reality that any country’s
security can be threatened not only externally from traditional
armed aggression, but also internally from ideologically
motivated individuals who use our free societies as bases
for attacks against us.”

Noting that
North America and Europe have come closer together since
the attacks, Vike-Freiberga cited favorable prospects for
“creating an extensive alliance that extends across
the globe to like-minded countries in Asia, Africa, South
America and Oceania.”

She argued that
the rise of international terrorism did not result from
a clash between civilizations. “The values of humanity
are universal, regardless of cultural or religious difference,”
she said. “Today, the clash is rather between the sanctity
of human life and the flagrant disregard for it, between
openness and seclusion, between freedom and oppression.”
She supports the apprehension of the terrorists and bringing
them to justice, as well as the international condemnation
of countries that harbor them.

Vike-Freiberga
focused on the promise of the future, including the creation
of a Europe “whole and free.” She is optimistic
that this year Latvia will fulfill its long-standing dream
of joining the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO).

“For Latvia,
full membership in these two international organizations
will signal its return to the peaceful, secure and stable
community of prosperous European nations from which it was
forcibly wrenched more than six decades ago,” she said.
Formal invitations to join the two organizations would recognize
Latvia’s “remarkable achievements in re-establishing
a democratic society and in rebuilding its economy from
the ground up.”

Latvia, slightly
larger than West Virginia, is located in Eastern Europe
between Estonia and Lithuania and bordered on the east by
the Baltic Sea. After a brief period of independence between
the two World Wars, Latvia was annexed by the U.S.S.R. in
1940. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Latvia re-established
its independence in 1991. The republic joined the World
Trade Organization in 1999, and in 2000, Latvia’s economy
recovered from the 1998 Russian financial crisis.

Vike-Freiberga
said Latvia’s membership in the EU and NATO could help
strengthen the commitment to democratic ideals and change
in Russia and other countries, such as the Ukraine and Georgia.

“The increasingly
close relationship between the United States, its NATO allies,
the NATO candidate countries, Russia and other like-minded
nations is based on shared values and on the respect for
each other’s security needs,” she said. “In
this new age of globalization, no country is an island unto
itself. We are more likely to be successful in our common
endeavors if we all act together rather than if each of
our countries acts alone.”

Asked whether
membership in NATO or the EU was more important to Latvia,
Vike-Freiberga said choosing one over the other would be
the equivalent of deciding whether to cut off her left arm
or right arm. “We want to be ambidextrous,” she
said.

Vike-Freiberga’s
visit to the Baker Institute was made possible through support
from the Shell Oil Co. Foundation.