by Laura Supjeva

1700 journalists, George W. Bush and Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Jacques Chirac’s birthday party, 4500 pairs of ethnographic mittens, traffic jams and classic music all in the same place and time. During November 28th and 29th Riga, the capital of Latvia, has become the assembly point for Heads of State and Government from NATO member countries, Ministers and top Alliance officials attending in world’s most widely covered summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The summit itself and the issues upon whom it has been negotiated during the debates, have a significant meaning and impact not only on NATO’s future functioning but also on an average inhabitant of Latvia. While leaders were holding talks about auxiliary troops in Afghanistan and future action and co-operation forms of alliance, citizens of Riga also experienced sort of peace troops for NATO on the streets. The center of the city was closed and there where only allowed very limitated move of citizens.

As the history shows, Latvia have already organized some international “meetings” like the Eurovision Song Contest 2003, when it hosted music elite, and the World Championship in Ice Hockey 2006 – the gathering of transnational sports tycoons; and now it was the turn to welcome the political apical.

Operations to organize the latest one had started long time beforehand the “pitched battle” by solving the security issues and participants’ mittenizing task. Concerning the guarding point, the biggest challenge was to ensure the safeness of top leaders, especially for George W. Bush, the president of the USA. The first violin in this context played United States Secret Service (USSS), but, of course, domestic security forces were also deeply involved, and that could be seen all around the city. For instance, because of the strict traffic limitations, publishers found it as a mission impossible to distribute newspapers, therefore they were not published.

In order to represent Latvian culture in form of presents, it has been organized the “pan-Latvian knitting campaign” where 4500 different handmade mittens have been produced: one pair for each participant as a take-away piece of Latvia. During the summit, the culture of Latvia has also been represented in other ways – through high performance of classical music.

Concerning NATO’s future and NATO’ summit itself as a political and symbolic notion, the world media have covered and focused on different issues in different angles. Some of them mentioned Jacques Chirac’s “birthday party” and the possible but non-appeared guest from Federation of Russia. Others themselves pointed out the necessity to find a new way of further functioning that would not only be based on a military logic.