DUSHANBE, August 13, Asia-Plus – Itar Tass — The Peace Mission 2007 antiterrorist command and staff exercise of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) started on in Russia’s Chelyabinsk region on Saturday, August 11.
The exercise has involved about 6,000 servicemen from the armies of Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, as well as over 1,000 military equipment units.
The exercise opening ceremony took place at the Chebarkul military range in the morning, during which the troops participating in the manoeuvres were briefed and given the operational directive signed on Thursday by the Chiefs of the General Staff of the SCO member states in the Chinese city of Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.
The first joint training session involving about 4,000 servicemen and over 500 combat and special-purpose vehicles followed the ceremony.
“Aviation and ground components of the United Troops Group were engaged in full,” an aide to the exercise chief from the Russian side, Colonel Igor Konashenkov said.
“Basically this is the first such training because Tajik and Kyrgyz units did not take part in the joint training on August 6 as they arrived a day later and only watched the manoeuvres,” he said.
Ahead of the manoeuvres that will last till August 17, the Chiefs of the General Staff of the SCO countries held military-political consultations in Urumqi.
According to the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, General Yuri Baluyevsky, the Peace Mission 2007 manoeuvres mean a specific step in the training of the armed forces of the SCO member states for joint response to security threats in the region. Along with terrorism, extremism, drug aggression, organised crime and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, Baluyevsky also mentioned problems related to security “in the conditions of growing pressure from mass media of certain Western states.”
“These states continue to make attempts to convince our nations of the necessity to form so-called ‘true democratic’ institutions of state and public management using the Western model, which destabilises the situation in the states of the region,” Baluyevsky said.
The SCO member states held the first such manoeuvres in China in 2005.
