Statement

by Deputy Minister of Defence of Kazakhstan
General Bulat Sembinov
Meeting of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council

Honorable chairman, ladies and gentlemen,
I would like to extend my appreciation for the opportunity to have the floor.

Within contemporary security environment we are challenged by the variety of complex threats such as terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery means, as well as problems emanated from instability in some nations, problems that intimidate entire global stability.

The situation in Afghanistan largely impacts security in the Central Asian region. Destructive forces seek to expand their influence and activities primarily in the areas around Afghanistan.

Thus international efforts aimed at stabilizing situation in the country, forcing peace, law and order, establishing conditions for economic growth emerge to prominence.

Kazakhstan realizing the importance of achieving stability in Afghanistan makes its own contribution. We provided our airspace for the Coalition aircraft over-flight within the operation 'Enduring Freedom' free of charge. Since 2003 over 5,200 aircraft over-flew our airspace, and more than 80 aircraft utilized Kazakhstan's airfields for emergency landing.

Today Kazakhstan develops the special program for Afghanistan that will provide measures to strengthen humanitarian and economic cooperation, make investment into Afghani economy, train personnel. In particular, we plan to construct a hospital and a school in Bamian and Samangan provinces.

Our Government is ready to stimulate Kazakh companies to enter Afghani market.

I'd like to emphasize that today Kazakh society is caught on the stage of far-reaching changes led by President Nazarbayev and directed at national modernization and democratic transformation. The Constitution has undergone changes that strengthen the role of Parliament and political parties. Electoral legislation has been improved. All political reforms aim at enhancement of citizen status and recognition of citizen rights.

This time is the time for the national economy to grow, for us to approach the most burning social problems, to assert our state on international arena as a nation that is committed to peace and security.

Joint efforts on countering terrorism, extremism, and illegal armed formations require development of new military strategies. That is why having not adapted national defense policy and organization to the changed realities one can hardly expect effective protection of vitally important interests.

Bearing this in mind this March we adopted new Military Doctrine that embraced our own development expertise and wide international experience.

The international dimension that has been gaining increasing importance as a key tool of regional security makes a separate paragraph in the Doctrine. The Doctrine for the first time incorporated paragraphs for coalitional building and peacekeeping.

According to the priorities provided in the Doctrine we continue defense reformation where an important role is played by collaboration with NATO under the umbrella of IPAP, PARP, and OCC.

Implementation mechanisms of these programs enable us to resolve issues of the Armed Forces transformation, including adaptation of some components to NATO standards.

Thus last year the Alliance experts conducted level one OCC assessment of the Kazakh peacekeeping brigade's subunit. This year we will conduct self-evaluation of other units. Next year other KAZBRIG subunits will be assessed.

In this regard the importance of ongoing work on further strengthening of the OCC capacity should be stressed.
Joint activities are significantly valuable when attaining operational interoperability.

First of all I'd like to highlight the criticality of PFP training centers. That is the very reason we have been promoting our initiative to establish such a center in Kazakhstan to train personnel including servicemen representing regional states.

Joint exercises are invaluable as a format for operational interoperability evaluation in realistic environment. In this context we stepped forward with the initiative to host the Steppe Eagle exercise in the spirit of Partnership for Peace starting 2009 that will enable us to attract not only regional participants but other partner nations as well.

We believe that our initiatives will contribute to partner nations force training, operational interoperability, regional and global security.

Thank you for your attention.