NATO-led rescuers to test their strength in Uzbekistan

TASHKENT, April 18 (AFP) Apr 18, 2003
Rescue personnel from 20 countries will test their earthquake and avalanche response skills in a NATO-led exercise in Uzbekistan in late April, a representative of the Central Asian country's emergency situations ministry said on Friday.

A series of disaster scenarios will be enacted from April 26 to April 30 in what is the largest rescue exercise ever carried out in cooperation with NATO in Central Asia, Rustam Mesherov, head of the ministry's foreign relations section, told journalists.

In recent years earthquakes and avalanches have claimed several lives and caused widespread destruction in the densely populated Ferghana valley where the exercise is to take place.

"Ferghana 2003" is part of NATO's Partnership for Peace programme among former Iron Curtain countries and will involve around 1,000 people from Armenia, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Ukraine and the United States.

SPACE.WIRE