TALLINN (AFP) -- Toomas Hendrik Ilves was sworn in Monday as president of European Union newcomer Estonia, and called on the Baltic country's citizens to forget the legacy of Soviet occupation and look to the future to build a strong country for coming generations.

"In assuming the office of president, I, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, solemnly swear to steadfastly defend the constitution and the laws of the Republic of Estonia," Ilves pledged in a ceremony in parliament. He swore "to exercise the power entrusted to me in a just and impartial manner, and to faithfully perform my duties to the best of my ability and understanding for the benefit of the people and the republic of Estonia."

Ilves, 52, was elected to the largely figurehead post of president of Estonia last month, beating Arnold Ruutel, who had held the post since 2001.

In an acceptance speech given in parliament and broadcast live on television and radio, Ilves called on Estonians to move on from the past, which is clouded by nearly 50 years of Soviet occupation, and build a strong, assertive Estonia to help stem the tide of emigration.

"In the next five years, we have to hand over to the first generation raised in the new, independent Estonia, a state that looks and behaves as if there was never an occupation," Ilves said.

Estonia and its Baltic neighbors, Latvia and Lithuania, were annexed by Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union at the end of World War II, only regaining independence in 1991, as the USSR crumbled.

"We have to create a society that will keep young Estonians in Estonia, and will bring back the tens of thousands who have left this country in the 15 years since independence," Ilves said.

"In every moment of its existence, our state must remain the creation of our own citizens -- not that of Moscow, Brussels or the International Monetary Fund," said Ilves, who was the Baltic state's foreign minister in the run-up to its joining the European Union and NATO in 2004.

Estonians must stop leaning on the past, as doing so fosters divisions in the small country of 1.3 million, he said.

Despite rapid economic growth since restoring independence from Moscow in 1991, deep divisions remain among those who have embraced reforms -- usually city-dwellers, who form the core of Ilves' backers -- and the have-nots, who mainly live in the countryside and are sentimental for the communist era.

Ethnic divisions still linger, too, because of the mass deportations of Estonians to Siberia carried out at the start of the Soviet occupation, and a subsequent influx of Russians to Estonia, as Moscow set out to "russify" the Baltics.

"If we want to hand down a mentally sound state to the generation that was born in independent Estonia, we cannot use the past as a stick any longer," Ilves said.

With the 52-year-old taking office in Estonia, all three Baltic states have presidents who spent the long Soviet occupation in exile in the West.

"It's time to turn a new page and think of the future," Ilves said Monday in his speech, delivered in the rose-colored baroque-style parliament building that sits atop Toompea hill in Tallinn.

A Social-Democratic member of the European parliament since 2004, the year Estonia joined the EU, Ilves was last month elected president of Estonia with 174 votes in a 345-member electoral college, beating Ruutel by 12 votes.