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Vaira Vike-Freiberga

From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.

The title given to this article lacks diacritics because of certain technical limitations. The title with diacritics is: Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga.

Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga (born December 1, 1937 in Riga, Latvia) is the current president of Latvia. She was elected president in 1999 and reelected in 2003.

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Biography

Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga's parents were World War II refugees. They left Latvia in 1944 and lived in several countries: Germany, Morocco and Canada. She studied at the University of Toronto at Mississauga and McGill University, receiving a Ph.D. in psychology in 1965. She then worked as a professor of psychology at Université de Montréal from 1965 to 1998. During this period, she served as the Vice-Chair of the Science Council of Canada and the president of several professional organizations in social sciences. She was also active in the Latvian community in Canada. A large part of her research focused on Latvian folk literature.

In 1998, Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga returned to Latvia to lead the Institute of Latvia, an organization devoted to promoting Latvia abroad. A year later, in June 1999, she was elected the president of Latvia. She was originally not a candidate but the Latvian parliament failed to elect a president in the first round. Then, Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga was chosen as a compromise candidate, as a highly respected person not affiliated with any of the political parties in the parliament.

Throughout her two presidential terms, she has been very popular among Latvians, with her approval rating ranging between 70% and 85%. She has been most active in foreign policy. Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga is known for outspoken criticism of Russia and active pursuit of Latvia's membership in NATO and EU (which Latvia joined in 2004). She is also a strong supporter of the US policy in Iraq. On various occasions she has demanded Russia to apologize for the Soviet occupation.

Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga is married to Imants Freibergs, a professor of computer sciences at Université du Québec à Montréal, who is currently the president of Latvian Information Technology and Telecommunications Association (LITTA). They have two children: Kārlis and Indra.

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