Romanian ambassador: Involvement of Azerbaijani civil society to NATO initiatives to be priority in 2010

This year, the involvement of civil society to the initiatives held in the alliance in the country will be the priority of the Romanian Embassy, representing NATO in Azerbaijan, Romanian ambassador Nicolae Ureki said today.

"The last year demonstrates good results. About 27 events were held in Baku. This year, we hope to continue this positive trend, Ureki said, opening the NATO conference.

The international conference "NATO on the eve of the 61-st anniversary: the present and the future of the organization" takes place in Baku on Thursday. Political analyst Vafa Guluzade, Hikmet Gadjizaadeh attended the conference. The head of the Azerbaijani Institute for Cooperation with NATO Farrukh Mammadov addressed with welcome speech.

Today's meeting is to demonstrate the alliance's work and what future of the organization the bloc's old member-states see, Ureki said.

NATO is a strong organization, because it is based on the principles of democracy, as well as it has a great opportunity to meet the challenges of the modern world, the ambassador said.

The Embassy of Romania is doing everything possible to intensify the dialogue between NATO and Azerbaijan. It tries to make close and expand awareness of the public about the principles and objectives of the bloc.

Today, NATO's cooperation with the South Caucasus states - Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia - is mainly carried out within the program "Partnership for Peace", "Action Plan Individual Partnership", as well as "Planning and analysis program". These documents define the objectives and intentions of the partner countries to hold consultations with NATO on reforms in the spheres of defense, security and military policy.

Besides the support in conducting the reforms, one of the important goals of NATO's cooperation with Azerbaijan is to develop the ability of the armed forces of the country to interact with the NATO countries' forces in peacekeeping operations and crisis response. Since 1999, the Azerbaijani troops have provided NATO peacekeeping operations in Kosovo with support, and since 2002 - in Afghanistan.


/Trend/