Georgia, Tbilisi, May 21 / Trend , N.Kirtzkhalia/
On May 21, the military base in Vaziani in a suburb of Tbilisi will host the second phase of field training exercises within the NATO program "Partnership for Peace", which is called the "Cooperative Lancer 09. The Georgian Defense Ministry, thousands of soldiers from 14 countries - nine NATO countries (USA, Albania, Canada, Croatia, Spain, United Kingdom, Greece, Hungary, Turkey) and five partner countries (Georgia, Ukraine, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Azerbaijan) will attend the exercises.
The second stage envisages training of multinational forces to peacekeeping operations at a battalion level and will last by June 3.
These exercises are a part of the NATO program "Partnership for Peace" which enables the partner-countries to establish individual relations with NATO.
The same exercises took place in Armenia in 2008.
Russia was against of the NATO exercises in Georgia and will hold large-scale "Caucasus-2009" exercises in response to it.
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