Latvian president Valdis Zatlers will travel Sept. 22 for a week-long visit to the United States, where he will meet first with members of the Latvian community in New York and then will participate in meetings at the United Nations, his press office has announced.

Also traveling to the United States is Foreign Minister Artis Pabriks, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Both officials are scheduled to attend a 10 a.m. Sept. 23 service in the New York Latvian Ev.-Lutheran Church, 253 Valentine Lane, Yonkers, after which they will meet with community members. Archbishop Elmārs Rozītis will lead the service.

As the work week begins, Zatlers plans to be at a Sept. 24 meeting of world leaders to discuss global climate change. The meeting, titled “The Future in Our Hands,” is organized by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

On Sept. 25, the president is scheduled to participate in the opening of the general debate session of the 62nd annual U.N. General Assembly. Zatlers also will meet with Georgian President Mihail Saakashvili and participate in a roundtable on human rights and democracy organized by U.S. President George Bush.

In the afternoon, Zatlers and Pabriks are scheduled to officially open the Latvian honorary consulate in at 155 Perry St., New York City. Daris Gunārs Dēliņš, originally from Australia, became the honorary consul in New York City in July. He is the son of the late Emīls Dēliņš, who was editor of Austrālijas Latvietis and honorary consul in Australia, and brother of Jānis Roberts Dēliņs, the current honorary consul in Melbourne, Australia.

The president will be in the spotlight Sept. 26 as he opens that day’s debate in the General Assembly. Zatler’s speech is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. local time and, according to his press office, will touch on subjects such as reform of the U.N. Security Council, human rights, participation in peace-keeping missions and development work, international responsibility for guaranteeing stability in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the question of Kosovo. The president’s speech will be available as a live Webcast and will be archived at www.un.org.

Later in the day, Zatlers is to meet with Polish President Lech Kaczyński and Croatian President Stjepan Mesić.

Zatlers is scheduled to return to Latvia on Sept. 27.

In addition to attending a meeting of U.S. and European Union foreign ministers, Pabriks has separate meetings scheduled with Daniel Fried, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, as well as with the foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Brazil. Pabriks also is to meet with representatives of American Jewish organizations.

Pabriks returns to Latvia on Sept. 28.

A new Latvian government work group has until Dec. 10 to come up with proposals for granting dual citizenship to children born to citizens living abroad.

The work group is to meet for the first time Sept. 20, the Secretariat of the Special Assignments Minister for Social Integration announced Sept. 19 in Rīga. The group is an outgrowth of a report submitted last month to the Cabinet of Ministers outlining measures that could be taken to encourage repatriation to Latvia, especially among the thousands of Latvian citizens who in recent years have moved to Ireland, the United Kingdom and other locations.

Granting dual citizenship to children born to Latvian parents abroad was among key points noted in the report.

“I believe that this will foster the maintenance of ties to the homeland, (as well as) stimulate even more active involvement in Latvian current affairs among those living abroad and their return to Latvia,” Oskars Kastēns, the integration minister, said in a press release. “I am convinced the work group will accomplish this task.”

Heading the work group will be Anda Ozola, an adviser to Kastēns. Also serving will be representatives from the Ministry for Children and Family Affairs, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Naturalization Board, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of the Interior and the Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs.

The group will forward its proposals to the Cabinet of Ministers.

One challenge for the work group may be clarifying Latvia’s citizenship law. While the law already grants Latvian citizenship to children born to citizens living abroad, it also prohibits dual citizenship. For Latvian citizens in Ireland, this could be particularly problematic. Under Irish law, anyone born in Ireland before 2005 could be an Irish citizen, according to the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service. Since Jan. 1, 2005, children born to non-Irish nationals may qualify for Irish citizenship only if at least one of the parents has lived in Ireland for three of the fours before the child was born.

Latvian President Valdis Zatlers will travel Sept. 19 to Sweden for a one-day visit, meeting with government officials and the local Latvian community, his press office has announced.

The day’s program includes an audience with King Carl XVI Gustaf and meetings with Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and Per Westerberg, speaker of the Swedish parliament, the Riksdag.

Zatlers also is to visit the Stockholm-based Karolinska Institutet, a leading medical university, and meet with its president, Harriet Wallberg-Henriksson. The Latvian president is a orthopedic surgeon.

At the Embassy of Latvia in Stockholm members of the local Latvian community will have the opportunity to meet with Zatlers.

The Latvian president also will visit the Vasa Museum, which features the 17th-century Vasa warship, and give an interview to Dagens Nyheter, Sweden’s largest daily newspaper, the press office announced.