America’s top military official has sought to reassure Latvia that the U.S. and the NATO defense alliance stand ready to defend the Baltic republics.

In an Oct. 21 meeting with Latvian officials in Rīga, Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said it is important for NATO to recognize what the alliance means and the responsibilities and obligations that go with it, according to the American Forces Press Service.

Mullen noted that the Baltic republics remain nervous following Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August. Russia has since pulled its forces out of Georgia proper, but is maintaining a presence in the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia—both of which Russia has recognized as independent states.

“One of the reasons I am here is to send a very visible message of reassurance,” Mullen said during a press conference with Latvian President Valdis Zatlers.

“All of us are concerned by the recent invasion into Georgia of Russia,” Mullen said. “In my past experience in NATO, I’ve always tried to understand the views of the Baltic (republics) because of the history and how they view what has happened.”

Mullen also met with Foreign Minister Māris Riekstiņš and Defense Minister Vinets Veldre.

“Our military cooperation with the United States will become closer,” Veldre said in a statement issued after the meeting.

Mullen noted that NATO aircraft patrol Baltic airspace, a duty currently being handled by U.S. Air Force jets based in England.

Latvia and six other countries will join the U.S. Visa Waiver Program next month, President George Bush told an Oct. 17 meeting of foreign ambassadors at the White House.

The president said his administration is using its new authority to admit Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and South Korea to the program that allows citizens of those countries to enter the U.S. with just a passport.

“For years the leaders of these nations have explained to me how frustrating it is for their citizens to wait in lines and pay visa fees to take a vacation or make a business trip or visit their families here in the United States,” Bush said, according to his press office. “These close friends of America told me that it was unfair that their people had to jump through bureaucratic hoops that other allies can walk around.”

At present, a total of 27 countries, mostly in Western Europe, are part of the program, meaning their citizens can enter the United States with just a passport. U.S. citizens already are able to enter Latvia without a visa.

In Rīga, Foreign Minister Māris Riekstiņš expressed satisfaction with the announcement.

“This sort of decision has both political and symbolic meaning that without a doubt attests to the United States’ trust in Latvia,” Riekstiņš said, according to a foreign ministry press release.

Bush’s announcement confirmed rumors that had circulated for the past week that Latvia and other countries would soon be invited to join the Visa Waiver Program.

The U.S. State Department on Oct. 8 reported that the percentage of visa applications rejected by the American embassy in Rīga dropped to 8.3 percent during the past year. Under terms of the Visa Waiver Program, countries must have a refusal rate of no more than 10 percent.

Latvia also last month completed the waiver program’s consultative process when it signed an agreement with the United States on combatting serious crime. Latvia became the first to complete the process among a number of Eastern European nations working to join the Visa Waiver Program. The nations joining the Visa Waiver Program also had to institute several security measures, including the use of new tamper-proof biometric passports.

While the news is positive for Latvia, the process by which it and a number of other countries have been encouraged under the Bush Administration’s “visa waiver road map” has been critized by the U.S. General Accounting Office.

The GAO, the U.S. government’s own watchdog agency, issued a report Sept. 24 that questions why countries such as Latvia, whose visa refusal rate earlier had been above 10 percent, were fast-tracked for admission to the waiver program by the Department of Homeland Security while other nations with lower rates saw little progress. For 2007, Latvia’s refusal rate was 11.8 percent.

“The executive branch is moving aggressively to expand the Visa Waiver Program by the end of 2008, but, in doing so, DHS has not followed a transparent process,” according to the report.

As a result, information about the program could be confusing. For example, State Department officials told the GAO that it could be difficult to explain to countries such as Croatia, Israel and Taiwan—whose visa refusal rates already were lower than 10 percent last year—why the DHS was not negotiating with them about admission to the Visa Waiver Program but was talking to countries such as Latvia, where the refusal rate was higher.

Under DHS standard operating procedures, according to the GAO report, the process for admitting a country to the Visa Waiver Program begins with a nomination by the State Department. DHS then is to complete a comprehensive review of the candidate country and make a recommendation to Congress.

While the new members of the Visa Waiver Program were not nominated by the State Department, all of them had signed “road map” memoranda of understanding with the U.S. government—but that’s also not standard procedure, the GAO report added.

Classic films, new documentaries and other movies from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania will be presented Oct. 17-22 during the Baltic Film Festival Berlin, according to organizers. The festival this year is part of the year-long Essentia Baltica 2008 culture festival taking place around Germany.

Films will be presented at the Babylon, Rosa-Luxemburg-Straße 30, Berlin. In all, 20 films will be screened.

Among Latvian films scheduled for screening are the late Juris Podnieks’ well-known 1986 documentary, Vai viegli būt jaunam? (Is It Easy To Be Young?), which examined youth culture in the time of Soviet perestroika, and Edvīns Šnore’s 2008 documentary, The Soviet Story, which looks at the historical relationship between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

Other Latvian films on the program are Reibums (Disgust), a 2007 short feature by director Aiks Karapetjans; Natsid ja blondiinid (Nazis and Blondes), a 2008 Estonian-Latvian documentary directed by Arbo Tammiksaar; Teat Beat of Sex: Episodes 8, 9, 10, 11, a 2007 short animation film by Signe Baumane that was produced in New York; and Vai citi? (Us and Them), a 2006 documentary by Antra Cilinska.

Also on the program is a screening of Midsummer Madness, a 2006 feature film directed by the Latvia-born Alexander Hahn. The comedy, shot in Latvia, focuses on the efforts of a young man who visits the country during Midsummer to find his father’s former lover.

Latvia’s ambassador to Germany, Ilgvars Kļava, will be among officials speaking during the festival’s opening event Oct. 17, according to the Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

For further information, visit www.balticfilmfestivalberlin.net.