After morning talks in Riga, Laimdota Straujuma and Taavi Roivas said they were in full agreement over the need to implement decisions taken at last year's Wales NATO summit and that their definitions of a "permanent" presence tallied exactly.
"There's no difference: persistent, permanent, ongoing - different terms are used to describe the presence of NATO troops here. What's important is that troops are here, Full stop," Straujuma asserted.
"The definition of 'permanent' is something very detailed when talking about positioning any troops. It can be lost in translation when you use different synonyms and then in English it turns up in a different phrasing," said Roivas.
"What we are expecting is to go further with the decisions made in Wales... the decision was that NATO has to be present in all of its territories including our two countries."
"Yes we are also building new facilities to host our allies be it American, German any other NATO countries. The plans currently are to rotate units after three or four months. This will continue. We are simply saying we are prepared to host more units, we are prepared to host European allies in addition to US allies and we are doing investments in order to make them feel at home."
