Ex-Official From U.S. Wins Presidency in Lithuania

Valdas Adamkus, a Lithuanian American, defeated a former prosecutor general by a wafer-thin margin today to win Lithuania’s presidential runoff election.

Final results from Sunday’s voting gave 72-year-old Adamkus 49.90% to Arturas Paulauskas’ 49.29%, the Electoral Commission said.

The presidential post in the Baltic state is largely ceremonial, but the holder appoints the prime minister and can send legislation back to Parliament for amendments. The president also is expected to be Lithuania’s voice abroad.

Silver-haired Adamkus, a former senior official of the Environmental Protection Agency in the Chicago area, pledged to keep the former Soviet republic of 3.6 million people on course for entry into the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

“We want to make sure that Lithuania will become a member of international organizations like the EU and ultimately of NATO,” Adamkus told reporters. “I realize it will probably take some time until we qualify [for those institutions], but [that] is not a tragedy,” he said.

Aides of Paulauskas said the lawyer would accept defeat gracefully. “We have to know how to lose,” said senior aide Arvydas Juozaitis.

Analysts had predicted that the election would be close, but no one had forecast that it would go down to virtually the last votes in a night of tense waiting when the lead swung back and forth several times.

During the campaign, both candidates highlighted their status as political novices untainted by past scandals or battles. The strategy propelled them through the first round vote on Dec. 21 when Vytautas Z. Landsbergis, who led Lithuania to independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991, finished a miserable third.

Adamkus portrayed himself as an experienced administrator with a deep knowledge of the West, to which he fled in 1944 as Soviet troops invaded the Baltic state.

He pointed out that as a regional head of the EPA he had been responsible for a budget larger than that of the Baltic state.

Paulauskas, 44, campaigned as the standard-bearer for the next generation and won the first round election. But his 45% in that vote was not enough to avoid a runoff battle against Adamkus, who gained Landsbergis’ support in the runoff race.

Adamkus and Paulauskas both advocated liberal economic reforms, as well as backing Lithuania’s bids to join the EU and NATO.