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Address By H.E. Lennart Meri The President Of The Republic Of Estonia At Fredensborgs Palace on April 12, 1994
12.04.1994

Your Majesty,
Your Royal Highness,
Ladies and Gentlemen!


The Danish Royal Castle is in Copenhagen, but the Garden of the Danish King is in Tallinn. The very name of Tallinn, the capital of the Republic of Estonia, is translated from Estonian as 'Danish town'.

These two sentences are, in the first place, meant to declare my love for the Baltic Sea - the mediterranian sea of the Nordic countries - which had united us as one village, as next-door neighbours, ages before McLuhan's vision of the universal village. As I say ages before McLuhan I truly mean times immemorial. Times so remote that there was nothing on world maps to the north of Estonia but a gaping empty space, an arctic darkness, the misty home of the cold winds this side of Hyperborea. I hope I am not offending my friends in Finland by saying so. I mean the remote years before 1035 when the titles of your Canute the Great included Dux Esthoniae. My mind is not on the titles: it is on the fact that the lines of force of our common sea sprang from two small peninsulas and converged on the two small peninsulas - Denmark and Estonia. It is the will of God, nature and man rather than the pleasure of chance that Denmark and Estonia are also comparable in size, indeed in that they both are small states. And I am saying this with attachment and love. In the first place, I should be frightened by the idea of Estonia being like the Spain of Charles V, a great power where the sun never sets. I should be scared to think that, in that case, the Estonian foreign ministry would have to be as big as that of the Russian Federation or the United States of America, with as big bureaucratic contradictions in its documents. So I recall with sincere appreciation the words of Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, my one-time colleague and pipe-smoking friend, the words he pronounced here in Copenhagen during a dinner following the founding conference of the Council of the Baltic Sea States on the 6th of March, 1992, I quote: "A state opening on to the sea cannot be a small state."

This quotation, borrowed from King Leopold of the Belgians, compels me now, Your Majesty, to turn my back on history, our common human weakness (should I dare, by your leave, attribute to you any weeknesses peculiar to the president of Estonia) and to face the future, that raw material which the present processes into history.

The Kingdom of Denmark and the Republic of Estonia have inherited the Baltic Sea. In Estonian it is called the West Sea, not the East Sea. Even this alone gives proof that it has been and will be a two-way street. And like any street, our common sea must be governed by certain rules to grant security to all the ten Baltic rim states. It is fashionable at present to speak of the post-cold-war period. Everybody knows that winter is followed by spring, and one of spring's peculiarities is the breaking and floating of ice - a transition from one stable state to another, to summertime stability. We all long for summer, without always realizing that the breaking of ice, inevitable though it is, is certain to hide hazards in itself. The breaking of ice and the renewal of Europe began with the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, followed by the empires of the Romanovs, the Hohenzollerns and the Habsburgs, and with the realization of the right to self-determination in all of them except the area of the Romanovs' colonial empire. Only Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians and Poles managed to realize their self-determination in that area, thanks to their traditional adherence to West European civilization. The remaining peoples of the empire of the Romanovs were robbed of that right by a handful of terrorists, and it is only now that the processes which in Europe had found their solutions at the beginning of the century are being resumed in Russia.

With concern and sympathy we are all witnessing the formidable combat in Russia between democracy and empire. It rouses the scars that Denmark and Estonia have in common and hence also common expectations. The Hitler-Stalin Pact earmarked Denmark for the Third Reich and Estonia for the Soviet Union. Denmark lost her independence a few months earlier than Estonia, but Estonia restored her independence forty-five years later than Denmark. It is only now - the previous year and this - that we can thank the men who fought for Estonia's independence on various fronts and later in prison camps. It is only now that the Second World War is coming to an end for us, only now have Estonia and the public in Europe heard the commitment to withdraw the last foreign troops from Estonia by August 31. We are confident that at the united will of European democracy Russia will abide by her commitment. In this connection I would like to convey to you, Majesty, and through you to the people of Denmark, the most sincere gratitude of our people for the assistance in the realization of the Estonians' right to self-determination and in the revival of the Republic of Estonia. We shall never forget the Danish volunteers in our liberation battles of 1919, nor the 49 Danish chevaliers of our Cross of Freedom, headed by His Majesty the King of Denmark. By no means can we forget the help we had from Denmark to open the Estonian mission in Copenhagen on the 20th of December 1990, which essentially developed into the Embassy of the Republic of Estonia even before that dramatic week in the August of 1991 when I had the honour of being the first foreign minister of the Republic of Estonia to visit you, Majesty, which happened slightly before midnight and at a speed magnanimously overlooked by the Copenhagen police. I can assure you that the trust of Denmark in Estonia, the empathy of Denmark with us has added to our self-confidence in the development of the Estonian state as a reliable partner. Your ambassador and our friend could tell you of the big changes in the politics, economy, security policy and the street scene of Tallinn that have taken place since your visit to Tallinn less than two years ago. Those changes have been swift, for the Estonian people have been ready for great self-sacrifices. The source for the self-sacrifices has been idealism. The greatest sacrifices for the reconstruction of a just and harmonious state have fallen to the lot of Estonian peasants and Estonian old age pensioners, who have retained in their hearts through decades a memory of Estonia as a democratic law-abiding European state.

I would like to confine myself to our positive programmes. So I will only mention in passing that our negotiations on the normalization of relations with the Russian Federation and on the elimination of the effects of the former Soviet Union's colonial policy have regrettably given much more modest results over a period of two years. Estonia does not identify the Russian Federation with the former aggressive Soviet Union. Therefore we would be thankful to President Boris Yeltsin if he also officially distanced himself from the Soviet aggression directed against the Baltic states in 1940, the way he did during his autumn visits to Warsaw, Prague, Bratislava and Budapest. This kind of gesture towards the small Baltic states would be worthy of a great power and would substantially contribute to the dissipation of mistrust rooted in the past, to the growth of the prestige of a reformist Russia in the Baltic Sea region and in Europe as a whole.

Your Majesty, ladies and gentlemen!

The Republic of Estonia realizes what her responsibilities and rights in the Baltic Sea region are. More than that: Estonia envisages her future as a member of the European Union. In this we are confident of the supporting and attending role of Denmark.

Secondly. Recently we were glad to receive in the Estonian naval forces a patrol boat presented by Denmark. The boat, as much as any other aid of the kind, will play an important role in the reinforcement of security in the Estonian territorial waters and on the frontiers of the Republic of Estonia. This will also safeguard the security of the Scandinavian countries, including Denmark, since the security of the Baltic Sea region is as integral a whole as the Baltic Sea itself.

Thirdly. Being a member of the Council of Europe, the Republic of Estonia is an active champion of democracy and human rights. The rule of law in Estonia shall not operate selectively: it protects the interests of both the citizens of the Republic of Estonia and aliens. In this connection I would especially like to thank Denmark for the aid she has offered for the domiciling in Russia of the officers serving in the Russian armed forces to be withdrawn. As a mirror image, we have the duty to domicile in Estonia those citizens of the Republic of Estonia who have been scattered over Russia through deportations and other factors and who wish to return to their native country. I believe that there is willingness in Denmark to help us in this matter as well and thus to contribute significantly to make the Baltic Sea region stable, tension-free and exposed to friendly cooperation.

Your Majesty, ladies and gentlemen, such are our common problems of the present. They are rooted in our common past, in the times of Danebrog and still further back, but they are due to be solved together today and tomorrow.

 

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