AFP: Baltic states to get US visa waiver on November 17

Speaking in the Latvian capital Riga, US Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said the three Baltic states would join Washington's visa waiver programme on the same day as a handful of other countries, the majority from the ex-communist bloc. The countries will be on equal footing with western Europe," Chertoff told reporters. Later Wednesday, Chertoff visited neighbouring Estonia.

There, Foreign Minister Urmas Paet told AFP that the visa waiver would "certainly strengthen ties" between Tallinn and Washington and was a "sure indication of our good, tight relations and cooperation." Chertoff was scheduled to travel to Lithuania Thursday. US President George W. Bush earlier this month announced that visa waivers would be granted to citizens of the Baltic states, as well as the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, which were Soviet satellites but not formally under Moscow's control, plus South Korea.

The Baltic states were taken over by the Soviet Union during World War II and broke free from the crumbling bloc in 1991. They rapidly became staunch allies of Washington, contributing troops to the US-led coalitions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and joining NATO in 2004, the same year they entered the European Union.

Many eastern European citizens of the EU have felt on an unequal footing with their western European counterparts who can travel to the United States without visas, seeing it as a remnant of the Cold War. The visa waiver issue caused friction between the United States and the EU. Washington had struck bilateral pacts with the ex-communist newcomers who had grown frustrated at Brussels' lack of progress in negotiating a blanket accord for all 27 EU member states.

The Baltic states and the other countries admitted to the visa waiver programme agreed to share information about security threats to the United States, and that their citizens will also have to use a new system that requires travellers to register online ahead of their visits.

Would-be visitors will also need a biometric passport, which many of them do not currently have. Only 121,000 of Estonia's one million citizens hold one, for example. One of Brussels' concerns was that countries concluding such bilateral agreements with Washington would surrender far more information about their citizens than allowed under EU rules.

Six EU nations still lie outside the US scheme: Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Malta, Poland and Romania. The European Commission, the EU's executive body, has threatened to take retaliatory measures against the United States from January over Washington's failure to extend visa-free travel to all EU members.

Source http://afp.google.com/article/aleqm5gcsuxdhy_tj4jkzfkxx0tjpm~

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