China says concerns about safety of Lithuanian diplomats groundless
Lithuanian authorities said on Wednesday they had summoned their top diplomat back from China for "consultations" and that the embassy would operate remotely for the time being
China's foreign ministry said on Thursday that concerns over the safety of Lithuanian diplomats in China were groundless, a day after the Vilnius delegation and its dependents left China in a hasty departure.
Claims that Lithuanian diplomats feared for their personal safety or that China forbade its citizens from working at the country's office are "purely fictitious," foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a briefing.
Lithuanian authorities said on Wednesday they had summoned their top diplomat back from China for "consultations" and that the embassy would operate remotely for the time being.
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Beijing downgraded diplomatic ties with Lithuania last month after Taiwan opened a representative office in the Baltic state's capital.
Like most countries, Lithuania has formal relations with China and not self-ruled and democratically governed Taiwan, which Beijing views as its territory.
On Wednesday, a group of 19 people comprising embassy personnel and dependents left Beijing en route to Paris, a diplomatic source told Reuters. Another diplomat had called their departure a response to "intimidation".
Speaking to reporters in Vilnius on Thursday, Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said that Chinese authorities had informed diplomats that their identification cards would soon no longer be valid.
"We were given extremely short time...We asked for a longer period, simply because it would be complicated to arrange that return so quickly. We did not get any answer to the request, and people returned as fast as possible."
Unilateral changes to the status of a country's representatives would violate international treaties, he added.
China's foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Landsbergis' statements on Thursday.
China had demanded Lithuania change the status of its Beijing embassy into a lesser charge d'affaires office. This would have mirrored the change China made to its own legation in Vilnius in response to the opening of Lithuania's Taipei office.
"It does not feel nice for a diplomat in China to receive a blunt deadline to return ID, especially that this ID is your visa and the demand to re-apply has not been agreed mutually. Diplomats can not be hostages in diplomacy," said Diana Mickeviciene, Lithuania's ambassador to China, in a tweet.
Mickeviciene had already departed China earlier this year after Beijing demanded she withdraw and recalled its own envoy to Vilnius amid the dispute.
"The Lithuanian side also never raised the issue of personal safety to China," Wang said.
"If the Lithuanian side does not face reality, if it does not reflect and correct mistakes but instead shirks its own responsibility, then it will only challenge bilateral relations even more."
