– A delegation of staff officers from the Armenian Ministry of Defence visited Headquarters Allied Joint Force Command Brunssum (JFCBS) to attend the NATO – Armenian Expert Staff Meeting, 12th and 13th November, 2024.
Led by the Deputy Commander of the Armenian Peacekeeping Brigade, Colonel Ruben Papyan, the Armenian guests were warmly welcomed to the Headquarters by the Assistant Chief of Staff for NATO Cooperation and Partnership, Brigadier General Pavel Skala from the Czech Army. They went on to meet with representatives from several branches of JFCBS throughout the remainder of the visit.
The purpose of the visit was to discuss the way ahead to assist Armenia in planning, coordination and development of roadmaps for the upcoming two years as part of the NATO Partnership for Peace (PfP) programme. In that context, the Terms of Organisation for a Partner Capacity Cooperation Initiative 2025 (PCCI) was signed by both NATO and Colonel Papyan.
During their visit, the Armenian visitors were also briefed on the JFCBS tasks and structures, with a focus on military planning, organisation and processes.
Partnership for Peace (PfP) is a programme of bilateral cooperation between individual Euro-Atlantic partner countries and NATO. It allows partners to build up an individual relationship with NATO, choosing their own priorities for cooperation
Activities under the PfP programme touch on virtually every field NATO is involved in, including defence-related work, defence reform, defence policy and planning, civil-military relations, education and training, military-to-military cooperation and exercises, civil emergency response, and cooperation on science and environmental issues.
Armenia is a long-standing member of NATO’s PfP programme. Ever since the country joined the programme on 5th October 1994, NATO has cooperated with Armenia in areas of civil preparedness, development of the armed forces, countering security threats, and NATO standards and capability development.
NATO Mobile Training Teams (MTT) regularly travel to Armenia in order to foster cooperation and train with an important partner on a variety of subjects.
Just last month, a NATO delegation led by JFC Brunssum paid a visit to Armenia with the intention of developing cooperative security, and to establish a coherent network in support of the execution of future partnership activities. This visit was also dedicated to promoting normalisation in the South Caucasus Area by encouraging the restoration of good neighbourly relations.