Baku, Azerbaijan Mar. 30
Trend:
NATO and Georgia are to hold a joint exercise this summer, said James Appathurai, the NATO secretary general's special representative for the South Caucasus and Central Asia.
He made the remarks during an online Q&A with the Georgian non-governmental organization, the Atlantic Council of Georgia, on March 30, News Georgia reported.
"The pace [of implementation of the Substantial NATO-Georgia Package] is very good," said Appathurai, adding that the NATO experts have been helping Georgia to set up a joint training center.
He also said the members of the core team, who will soon be in Georgia, have been identified, and there will be a joint exercise in Georgia this summer.
Earlier, during NATO's Wales Summit, held in September 2014, a package of measures was approved to help Georgia in its aspiration for its membership in the alliance.
The package includes the opening of a training center in Georgia, which will host the training of the servicemen of NATO and its partner countries.
Previously, the deputy defense minister of Georgia, Levan Girsiashvili, said a NATO training center will open in Georgia, presumably, by the autumn of this year.
Meanwhile, no location has been so far selected for the training center.
Georgia's institutional cooperation with NATO started in 1994, when the country became a member to the Partnership for Peace (PfP) program.
After the "Rose Revolution" of 2004, the cooperation between Georgia and NATO became even more intense.
In April 2008, during a summit of the heads of NATO member states in Bucharest, it was confirmed that Georgia and Ukraine in the future may become members of the alliance if they comply with the NATO standards.
Edited by CN