Your Excellency,
My dear Mrs. Danute Walesa,
Ladies and Gentlemen,


On behalf of my wife and myself I would like to tell you how satisfied
I am greeting you and Mrs. Walesa in the Republic of Estonia.

State visits can be formal, can be protocolary courtesies between the states. The visit by the President of Poland does not fall in this category. Your state visit focuses feelings into this day and tomorrow, the feelings Estonia has always treasured towards Poland, amplifies traditions that have never been extinguished, and brings rich capital we call hope and co-operation and realism to Estonia at a very poor time for Europe. It is a meeting of close friends.


How close and warm the feelings between our two states have been and are - it is what I understood at my state visit last year to Poland, to Warsaw arisen from ashes and to Gdynia, the headquarters of the Polish Navy. I regret Estonia is not in a position to receive you, Mr. President and Mrs Walesa, with the same sincere pomp and ceremony Estonia was honoured last spring, with the Diplomatic Corps accredited to Tallinn, with the Estonian and international publicity. It is only a little over two and half years since our state was reborn. Our state is only learning to walk.

And at the same time these two and half years in rebuilding the Estonian state entitle both us and you to be proud of the accomplishments of a small but strong and dedicated people.
I know you share this sense of pride not from generosity. You share it as a politician who has experienced the frantic difficulty in restoring parliamentary democracy, a state of justice and free market economy. Who has experienced with bitterness that the hedonistic Europe can nicely sing at festive boards each state is left alone with his troubles and difficulties at his time of tribulations and is as strong as strong are the sense of solidarity of a particular nation and his will to establish himself as a democratic state. One of the paradoxes of the Western democracy is manifested in its inability to defend itself before it is too late. The other paradox only seems to be more optimistic: democracy is never fatally too late in defending itself; one is to pay, however, for being late in blood and sufferings. I have repeated it tirelessly in one or the other way to my democratic colleagues in the West and in the East, the last time only two days ago in Lisbon, and I know, my dear President, these considerations in other words have ruled also your activity.

The historical experience of our people and of both of us corps out of the same soil: Poland reborn as well as Estonia reborn are the children of Munich, Hitler-Stalin Pact, Teheran and Yalta. Its scars are ailing even today, they throb with pain in every Estonian and Polish family, they are bleeding in the green turf of Polish Katyn and Estonian Norilsk. This historical experience would have been fruitless of it rouses only hatred and self-pity. This historical experience is fruitful because it obliges us to think and act for Europe when and if Europe does not know , care nor dare to take a look back to understand its future. Estonia and Poland know the terrifying price of Nazism and Communism and the formidable bill nobody can ever pay. Our experience must become the conscience of Europe,
our mutual experience says the slipping back to the ossuary of totalitarism starts from small compliance's , deceptive compromises, weariness of human beings. My dear President, I assure you the Estonian people never become weary. Politicians may get tired but never the people who has carried the sparkling longing for freedom in its heart through the night of totalitarism.

It has put a solid ground to the Estonian -Polish co-operation in security policy, economy and culture. This co-operation we designed in our meetings in Warsaw and Gdynia is not directed against any country but for democracy. It is not directed against Russia but for Europe. It has not directed to confrontation but to co-operation. And it is the most sincere wish of Estonia as it is of Poland that Russia would manifest in words and even more in deeds it has cut off its ties with the Communist Soviet Union, that Russia would look for a place for itself in the democratic world where the principles of international justice are respected. Estonia has made its decision. Estonia does not acquiesce in the situation where one member of the UN is threatening the other member of the UN with military means to achieve political aims. We must go on with what we have done so far tirelessly. We must repeat: the time of acting from the position of strength is over, irreversibly. It is what we can do for Europe , it is what we can do for Russia itself. And only so helping Europe and Russia we can approach hand in hand our dream of united Europe, bigger tomorrow than it is today.

Mr. President, Estonia and Poland are walking side by side on this noble road. This mutual road has been reminded me from day to day by the naval dagger presented to me on board of Orzel in Gdynia, the bright symbol of our painful past.

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