TALLINN, May 05, BNS – US Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns emphasized in his remarks during the American Foreign Service Association’s (AFSA) Memorial Plaque Ceremony on Friday that Estonia is a friend and ally of the United States.
Just like during World War II, attacks have been made against the sovereignty of free Estonia in the current week, Burns said at the ceremony to commemorate Henry W. Antheil, Jr., a clerk at the US Legation in Helsinki killed on June 14, 1940 while serving as a diplomatic courier when the Finnish passenger plane Kaleva was shot down by the Soviets over the Gulf of Finland.
Burns said that just like has been already confirmed by President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the entire US government, Estonia is a friend and ally of the United States, spokespeople for the Estonian embassy in the United States said.
The under secretary of state said that the United States respects the right of Estonia to make its decisions independently and to live as a free and sovereign country, as a member of NATO and an ally of the US.
Burns said that as a US diplomat he is very proud that President Franklin D. Roosevelt made the only right decision 70 years ago not to recognize the annexation of the Baltic states and that within the framework of that policy the Estonian diplomatic mission to the United States was able to continue its work.
Estonia’s regaining of its independence and making the Russian occupation troops leave are among the most remarkable events in modern history, he said.
The two other people whose names were added to the Memorial Plaque in Friday’s solemn ceremony were Margaret Alexander, a foreign service officer serving as deputy director with the USAID Mission in Nepal, killed on Sept 23, 2006 in a helicopter crash, and Doris G. Knittle, a foreign service nurse in Kabul, Afghanistan, found murdered in her home in August 1970.
The addition of the three names to AFSA’s Memorial Plaque brought the total number of Foreign Service employees known to have died in the line of duty to 225.
In the June 14, 1940 shooting of the Finnish passenger plane by two Soviet military aircraft near the Baltic Sea island of Keri all nine people on board the passenger plane were killed.
The US embassy in Tallinn has been helping an Estonian film company document Henry W. Antheil, Jr.’s life and death, the US embassy in Tallinn said. The forthcoming documentary film will be titled “The Story of the Kaleva.”