NATO plans military exercises in Georgia in frames of Partnership for Peace programme from May 6 to June 1 to improve “interoperability between NATO and partner countries,” NATO said in a statement on April 15.

Cooperative Longbow-2009 will be command post exercise in crisis response operations at the multinational brigade level. A field training exercise, Cooperative Lancer-2009, will then follow to provide basic training on peace support operations at the battalion level, according to the NATO statement.

Exercises will be held in Vaziani military base, twenty kilometers east of Tbilisi, with participation of about 1,300 personnel from nineteen NATO and partner countries: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Serbia, Spain, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom and the United States.

The statement also says that the planning for these exercises began in spring 2008.