Such taxpayer financial assistance to a non-democratic government means the diversion of resources that should instead be available for the emerging democracies of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and the Republic of Lithuania.

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Deborah Ann McCarthy, of Florida, a Career Member of the Senior Foreign Service, Class of Minister-Counselor, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Republic of Lithuania.

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Anne Elizabeth Derse, of Maryland, a Career Member of the Senior Foreign Service, Class of Minister-Counselor, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Republic of Lithuania.

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The projects examined by the Court of Auditors were in the Czech Republic, Italy and Lithuania.

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Nutty politicians in Poland and Slovakia, baffling stalemates in the Czech Republic and Lithuania and a belief that a chunk of the continent will stay backward may lead voters farther west to feel disappointed by past enlargements and to be hostile to any future one.

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The first, comprising the poorest eight new members - Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Malta - will have a fifth of the EU population but on average just 42% of the GNP per capita.

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This coming together of officials from Scotland, Spain, the Czech Republic, Lithuania and Liechtenstein is hardly likely to have supporters drooling in anticipation.

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Lithuania, the Slovak Republic and Belgium also derive more than half of their electricity from nuclear plants.

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It has been closely involved with preparations for membership by the five most developed Eastern European countries - Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Slovenia - and the three Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, who are all expected to join the EU in 2004.

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After being artificially cut off from Europe by the dead hand of state socialism, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Latvia, Estonia, and (my ancestral homeland of) Lithuania had regained their rightful place in the world and taken a very large step away from their troubled history of Russian and Soviet domination.

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