Lithuanian Foreign Minister is ready to stand down

Lithuania's Minister of Foreign Affairs Vygaudas Usackas all but resigned his post on Wednesday after he found himself on the sharp end of a public barrage of criticism from President Dalia Grybauskaite.

"If I'm an obstacle, I'll remove the obstacle by signing a letter of resignation," Usackas told journalists late in the afternoon, about one hour after Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius emerged from a closed-door meeting with the President to say she had lost confidence in the minister.

Grybauskaite's spokesman Linas Balsys said Usackas was too much of a one-man band for the President:

"The President is obliged to remark that a minister cannot have a personal foreign policy and go about implementing it without coordination with the head of state and even, on occasion, with the prime minister."

Tensions between Grybauskaite and Usackas had been simmering for weeks over a range of issues, including the the President's decision to recall Lithuania's ambassador to Georgia for engaging in politics at home, as well as over how to interpret a parliamentary report on CIA-built 'war on terror' prison sites in Lithuania.

Grybauskaite saw parliament's report as a damning indictment of Lithuania's intelligence agency, while Usackas said the findings proved virtually nothing.

Their latest spat concerned the approach to take with neighbouring Belarus in getting action on an extradition order for a man wanted in connection to crimes committed during Lithuania's independence drive two decades ago.

Grybauskaite signalled through her spokesman that a softly-softly approach which favours political dialogue over ultimatums would be more effective in resolving the situation than the hard-nosed style employed by Usackas.