(Adds Latvia also to sign on Wednesday)
By Huw Jones
STRASBOURG, France, March 11 (Reuters) - Estonia will ignore
protests from the European Commission and sign a bilateral visa
and air security deal with the United States on Wednesday, the
Baltic republic's president said.
Fellow Baltic state Latvia is also due to sign an agreement
on Wednesday, its Foreign Ministry said, adding to a row between
the European Union executive and some new member states keen to
get visa-free treatment in the United States.
President Toomas Hendrik Ilves said Estonia had kept
Brussels informed at every step of its talks with Washington.
"Estonia, which will sign a memorandum of understanding
tomorrow, has been pursuing this for four years and has kept the
European Commission informed at all times about what we are
doing," Ilves said on Tuesday.
"The Commission only now has decided to say something ... No
one seemed to care during this process," he told reporters
during a visit to the European Parliament.
"To continue this line of thought, it occasionally strikes
me as odd that countries that have visa waiver programmes, and
have had them for decades, should suddenly say you can't have
one," Ilves continued.
Latvia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that its aim
was to end inequalities in the treatment of EU citizens
travelling to the United States.
Most EU states are already part of a U.S. visa waiver
programme which allows people to travel without visas, but not
11 of the 12 mostly ex-communist countries that joined the bloc
in 2004 and 2007, or older member Greece.
The Commission, which has already tried to press the United
States to grant visa-free access to all 27 EU states, was due to
ask member governments on Tuesday for a mandate to act as sole
negotiator on securing visa-free access to the United States.
But the efforts of European Justice and Security
Commissioner Franco Frattini to keep the negotiations as the
exclusive competence of Brussels have been undermined by new
members of the bloc agreeing to do bilateral deals.
The Czech Republic angered the Commission and some older
member states last month when it signed a deal to make it easier
for Czechs to travel to the United States visa-free in exchange
for enhanced air security cooperation.
Hungary is expected to do the same later this month.
Countries signing such pacts do not get immediate visa-free
status, but Washington will make access easier when they fulfill
a number of security criteria.
For the Czech Republic, these include more cooperation on
passport and airport security and armed sky marshals.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is due to
sign the visa and air security deals with Estonia and Latvia on
Wednesday, a day before before he meets Frattini and other
senior EU officials for talks in Slovenia.
(Additional reporting by Patrick Lannin in Riga; Writing by
William Schomberg in Brussels; Editing by Catherine Evans)
