Armenia, Azerbaijan Turkey to participate in joint NATO exercise in Kazakhstan
NATO's Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Coordination Center (EADRCC) is organizing a Consequence Management Field Exercise in cooperation with Kazakhstan, the host nation, which will be conducted on Sept. 5-11.
The exercise "ZHETYSU 2009" is in accordance with the Civil Emergency Planning Exercise Policy and the Exercise Program for 2009-2013. It is a contribution by Kazakhstan to the Partnership for Peace (PfP) program. It will be the ninth EADRCC field exercise and the first EADRCC exercise hosted by Kazakhstan.
"The Prime Ministry General Directorate for Emergency Management, which is the EADRCC's contact point in our country, is also assuming coordination of all activities concerning the exercise. In addition to our country, the United States, Germany, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Armenian, Finland, Britain, Spain, Sweden, Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovenia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Ukraine will participate in the exercise," the announcement said.
For more than one-and-a-half years, Turkey and Armenia have been holding closed-door talks, mediated by Switzerland, to restore their relations. But the process stalled after Ankara said progress in normalization efforts was linked with progress in Armenia's Nagorno-Karabakh dispute. Armenia rejects any link between the two issues, Kazinform cites Today's Zaman.
See www.todayszaman.com .