VILNIUS, May 11 (Reuters) - Lithuania has published online a trove of documents detailing KGB activities while the Baltic state was in the Soviet Union, a move likely to reopen political wounds from that era and irk neighbouring Russia.
Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius said the information would help restore "historical justice, and counter Kremlin claims that Lithuania was never occupied by the former Soviet Union.
He spoke on Wednesday at a ceremony marking the release of documents related to the former Soviet secret service.
They describe the structure, activities and staff of the KGB in Lithuania between 1960 and 1991, when the Soviet Union broke up and Lithuania gained independence.
Collaboration with communist-era secret police remains a sensitive issue throughout the former Soviet bloc.
In 2005, an investigation by Lithuania's parliament named Antanas Valionis, a former foreign minister, and Arvydas Pocius, a former head of domestic intelligence, as being on a list of KGB reserves. Both deny cooperating with Soviet secret police.
The names of 1,500 secret KGB informers who voluntarily admitted their past links are to be kept secret by law.
Arvydas Anusauskas, head of the Lithuanian parliament's national security and defence committee, said there were about 6,000 KGB informers in the Baltic republic in the 1980s.
"It could be that some new names (of informers) will appear in the released documents," he told Reuters.
One document published online and dated 1984 showed the KGB could rely on 379 informers, including doctors, hotel maids and journalists, to spy on foreign visitors in Lithuania.
Bulgaria's government has called on the country's president to recall dozens of diplomats, identified as having been secret police agents, after its archives were opened in 2006. [ID:nLDE6BM0SP]
(Reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis; editing by Mark Heinrich)
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