Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 16
By Aygun Badalova - Trend:
Azerbaijan is a reliable, consistent contributor to joint activities, NATO Secretary General's Special Representative for the South Caucasus and Central Asia James Appathurai told reporters in Baku Feb.16.
Appathurai said he met with Azerbaijani leadership and thanked for the contribution that Azerbaijan is making to the partnership between the two sides.
He especially noted the cooperation in Afghanistan.
"Azerbaijan has a very special relationship with Afghanistan. Through NATO, we managed together to help train Afghan security forces, said the special representative. "Azerbaijan has offered us logistics and land transport."
He added that NATO was also contributing to security for Azerbaijan.
"We have worked consistently to provide advice and technical support to help [the country] with defense reform, to help the forces to become more effective," he said.
Appathurai noted that during today's meeting, the importance of Azerbaijan in providing the energy security for Europe and progress in the implementation of the Southern Gas Corridor project was highlighted.
Talking about the Individual Partnership Action Plan (IPAP), the special representative said that the end of the second year is approaching - it is usually a two years cycle.
"My colleagues will be coming here [Azerbaijan] soon to begin discussions of the next two years cycle," he said. "We have set partnership goals - what we want to achieve together and we will be of course discussing updating goals."
"The cooperation has been good. Azerbaijan has worked very closely to us to implement what we have set and what we are going to do. That's very positive," he added.
Azerbaijan-NATO cooperation is carried out within the "Partnership for Peace" program. Earlier, NATO adopted a document of the fourth stage of the Individual Partnership Action Plan for 2015-2016.