RFE/RL Watchlist: Poland and Lithuania disagree on minority issues

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Date: Sat, 10 Jul 1999 11:41:54 +0300 (EET DST)
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Subject: RFE/RL Watchlist: Poland and Lithuania disagree on minority issues

From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>

Original sender: RFE/RL <[email protected]>

RFE/RL Watchlist: Lithuania and Poland disagree on minority
issues


 
RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
_____________________________________________________________
RFE/RL WATCHLIST
Vol. 1, No. 25, 8 July 1999
 
A Weekly Checklist Of Events Affecting Civil Societies In Eastern
Europe And The Post-Soviet States

......................
 
LITHUANIA AND POLAND FAIL TO RESOLVE MOST DIFFERENCES ON MINORITIES. A
two-day meeting in Warsaw ending on 30 June did not resolve the
principal differences dividing Lithuania and Poland on issues
affecting each other's ethnic minorities living on both sides of their
common border. The head of the Lithuanian delegation, Remigijus
Motuzas, told the Baltic News Service: "Issues of national minorities
should be solved on the basis of parity, but the problem is that Poles
seem to be more concerned for their nationals living outside the
country than for the situation of national minorities inside Poland."
Motuzas expressed dissatisfaction that no progress was made on the
most contentious issues, such as the spelling of names in documents
and the future of a building claimed by the Lithuanian community in
the Polish town of Punsk, now used by the Polish border guard. Polish
officials are troubled by the recent incorporation of several villages
with ethnic Polish majorities into Vilnius - a move they say makes it
hard for an ethnic Pole to win an election to a legislative body. But
they deny that the meeting was a failure. Polish officials told RFE/RL
Watchlist that progress was made in the area of education: Poland
agreed that Lithuanian will be the language in all the classes at the
Lithuanian school of Seinai in Poland, and Lithuania agreed to print
more textbooks in Polish for Polish-language schools in Lithuania.

.................
 
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