President Dalia Grybauskaitė met with the President of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas. This is the first visit of the current Palestinian leader to Lithuania.

EU trade ministers have in the Foreign Affairs Council on October 18 in Luxembourg stressed the importance of signing or initialling free trade agreements with Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova in the upcoming Vilnius Eastern Partnership Summit and expressed concern about the Russian pressure. They also adopted the mandate to start negotiations on investment agreement with China.

At the 2013 United Nations Security Council election, which was held on 17 October in New York during the 68th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Lithuania received a majority and won a non-permanent seat on the Security Council for the 2014-2015 period. Lithuania was voted on by 187 countries.

In a set of annual reports adopted today, the European Commission recommends granting EU candidate status to Albania and, for the fifth time in a row, the opening of accession negotiations with the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The Commission also assesses the progress towards EU accession made elsewhere in the Western Balkans and in Turkey over the past year. Given the Icelandic government's decision to put accession negotiations on hold, a simplified report on Iceland takes stock of the current state of its alignment with the EU.

The Environment Council agreed today, October 14, the Council Conclusions defining the common position of the European Union for next month's Climate Change Conference in Warsaw. The Council, which was chaired by Lithuania's Minister for Environment, Mr. Valentinas Mazuronis, also deliberated two important legislative proposals and discussed on the future development of the Green Infrastructure.

I am following with sadness and anxiety the rescue operations currently on-going by the Maltese and Italian authorities to assist the people from a boat that capsized in the Mediterranean. Unfortunately the incident has caused new victims and I express my condolences to their families and my support and gratitude to Italy and Malta and the people who are carrying out the rescue operations, whose courage and quick reaction have contributed to reducing the death toll.