when it was too late to reverse their admittance into the Union. According to reports in respected national newspapers, the US envoy Bruce P. Jackson was the architect behind both the letter of the eight and the Vilnius letter. He arranged a meeting in the Lithuanian embassy in Washington, where the foreign ministers of all ten countries participated. The text had been proposed in advance, but according to the press reports it was Jackson who convinced the participants to accept the proposal and to disregard efforts by Bulgaria — then a rotating member of the UN Security Council — to alter the text. Since the early 1990s, Jackson had been an informal advisor to central European governments, advising them on the road to admission into NATO. He allegedly now convinced the foreign ministers of the Vilnius ten, that their support for the US in this international conflict would give them much better chances in the US Congress when it was to vote on accepting those countries into NATO. Criticism The letter was met with public consternation in many countries on the European continent — and surprise and criticism from several governments in the European Union. In retrospect, the letter is sometimes pointed at as a significant warning of the crisis and deadlock that came to signify the European Union the following years, with its inability to move forward the issues of defense cooperation, constitution, "transparency" and democratic legitimacy, or integration of the new member countries; and it has been questioned whether the governments in question in fact acted supportive of Anglo-Saxon interests critical or fearful of a strengthened EU, which these governments with their fresh experience of the Soviet Union's detrimental dominance on national independence might have been sensitive for. Such criticism may hint at the Vilnius letter as a tool for U.S. policies to divide and rule, citing essays from the think tank PNAC. More diplomatic criticism, partly following the same lines, was made by among others the French government, noting that the signing countries' admission to the EU was not jeopardized, but US promises — not least in terms of funding of future military improvements — may have been at stake. For their part the signing central European governments emphasized the Vilnius letter as a commitment to such traditional European and American values as free trade and democracy — and also their participation in the War against terrorism.