The Vilnius letter was a declaration of support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq from the nations of the Vilnius Group. It was published at the height of the Iraq disarmament crisis of early 2003, expressing confidence in the evidence presented by the U.S that Iraq had violated UN resolutions. Background 14 January 2003: Jack Straw, the United Kingdom's Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, announces that London would not wait for a UN decision to attack Iraq and would act on its own. Meanwhile, two other countries, Poland and Macedonia, offer to provide troops. 27 January 2003: Hans Blix presents the UN Security Council with the report that the inspectors had been granted access to every site they needed to inspect, but he says that "It is not enough to open doors." 28 January 2003: United States President George W. Bush delivers his State of the Union address to the United States' Congress, alleging that Saddam Hussein had ties with terrorist organizations, and that Iraq was a serious threat against the security of U.S. citizens as the world's most dangerous producer of weapons of mass-destruction. the letter of the eight of January 30, 2003, that according to many observers torpedoed the European Union's cautious position in the developing crisis, followed Colin Powell's assertion in the UN Security Council of Iraq's continuing development of illicit weapons. Overview The letter of the eight was followed on 6 February by a letter from the Vilnius Group comprising Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia which effectively supported a US military intervention in Iraq. The letter expressed confidence in the evidence presented by Powell and agreed that Iraq had clearly violated UN resolutions. In capitals around the world, the letter could not be interpreted as anything but support of a US military intervention in Iraq. By expressing support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq — by that point seemingly inevitable — the Vilnius letter was a public rebuke by ten EU candidates of France's and Germany's vocal opposition to American and British policy. The signatories were later dubbed "New Europe" by the US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and were to receive emotional criticism from the French president Jacques Chirac. Observers noted that the signatories by the letter indicated that they this time prioritized U.S. interests instead of the European Union's at a time