BBN head holds security talks in Vilnius - News - National Security Bureau

11.05.2017

BBN head holds security talks in Vilnius

Bilateral and regional cooperation in security were the main topic of Thursday talks in Vilnius between Poland's National Security Bureau (BBN) head Pawel Soloch and Lithuanian government officials. Soloch is on a 3-day official visit in Lithuania.

Paweł Soloch, who on Thursday spoke with the Lithuanian president's national security aide Zivile Satuniene and Defence Minister Raimundas Karoblis, told PAP that the talks focused on military and energy security as well as hybrid and cyberwar threats in the context of NATO's enhanced presence in Central-East Europe.

He added that also discussed was the future of the Lublin, southeastern Poland-headquartered LITPOLUKRBRIG multinational military battalion formed by Lithuania, Ukraine and Poland.

Soloch said Polish-Lithuanian security cooperation was developing very well, and had received "a new dynamic" in connection with the deployment of NATO combat units in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland.

Later on Thursday Soloch will speak with Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius. He will conclude his visit by laying flowers at a memorial to Poland's post-World War I independence architect and inter-war state leader Jozef Pilsudski (see: NOTE 1) in Vilnius' Rossa Cemetery and memorials to Polish soldiers fighting in the 1920 Polish-Bolshevik War. He will also tribute the victims of 1991 riots at Vilnius' TV tower at a memorial in the city's Antokol Cemetery.

On Wednesday Soloch met Polish airmen stationed in Lithuania's Siauliai airbase, from where they conduct NATO Baltic Air Policing flights over Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

Source: PAP

 

NOTE 1: This year will mark the 150th birthday of Jozef Pilsudski, a statesman and co-founder of Poland's independence. Pilsudski was born on December 5, 1867. After regaining independence by Poland in 1918, Pilsudski became the Chief of State, the Commander-in-Chief and Marshal of Poland.

In May 1926, following a successful coup d'état he took over power in Poland. He was Poland's two-time PM, General Inspector of Armed Forces and minister for military affairs (1926-1935).

Jozef Pilsudski was a proponent of preemptive war against Hitler, to which a concept he numerously tried to convince the French side.

He died at Warsaw's Belweder Palace on May 12, 1935. His funeral became a national tribute with a series of masses, ceremonies and a funeral train touring Poland.

After a two-year display at St. Leonard's Crypt in Kraków's Wawel Cathedral, in 1937 Pilsudski's body rested in a tomb at the Cathedral's Crypt. Pilsudski's brain according to his last will was passed for study to Stefan Batory University, while his heart was laid in his mother's grave at Vilnius' Rasos (Rossa) Cemetery.

Pope Pius XI conducted a special ceremony in the Holy See on May, 18th. Also a commemoration was held at League of Nations seat in Geneva and condolences poured in Poland from world heads of state, including Britain's King George V, Japan's Emperor Hirohito, France's Albert Lebrun and Pierre-Étienne Flandin, Austria's Wilhelm Miklas as well as Germany's Adolf Hitler, the Soviet Union's Joseph Stalin, Italy's Benito Mussolini and King Victor Emmanuel III. (PAP)