Kazakhstan-NATO cooperation of big importance ? expert

According to the politologist, Kazakhstan?s relations with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization include all possible directions of the NATO activity, namely holding of exercises, military-technical interaction, scientific cooperation, emergency planning. The question how deep is the process of convergence of Kazakhstan and NATO concerns everyone. There is also one more question. Isn?t there a conflict of interests between the participation of Kazakhstan in such structures as CSTO and SCO, which assume responsibility for the security in Central Asia, and NATO that is in classic view responsible only for Europe, but in practice is widened as far as Central Asia? Particularly I mean Afghanistan, where NATO conducts peacekeeping operations. This issue is quite deep and understood in different ways. In my opinion Kazakhstan, as Russia?s ally within the framework of CSTO and economic partner, has a right to develop cooperation with NATO at least to the level of Russia?s cooperation with the Alliance. As is known there exists a special council Russia-NATO for holding of joint consultations and top level meetings. The Kazakh-Russian relations are built on mutual confidence and there are no problems in relation to holding of regular NATO exercises or forums. I think that the governments of both countries have reached such confidence as well. This topic bears different rumors about the multi-vector policy of Kazakhstan, i.e. to what extent this policy is necessary and if it is better to choose one main partner and follow his politics. But there is no necessity to choose, as long as the choice is outlined in different multilateral and bilateral documents. As a prove I would recommend to count the number of high level visits and meetings between Kazakhstan and Russia and compare the results with the number of meetings at the same level between Kazakhstan and western countries and organizations. The score will be in favor of Russia. Those, who pay attention to conducting exercises, should compare the number of military men, involved in Kazakhstan-NATO exercises and in the exercises between Kazakhstan and Russia, where the bigger amount of military men and equipment is used. Besides, if the NATO exercises are mostly command and staff and have demonstrational character, the Russia exercises are real, simulated warfare exercises. The issue of establishment of a military group in Central Asia is being discussed now as well. On the other hand, the cooperation with NATO is absolutely important. Our country holds active stand on the issues of struggle against new threats, including terrorism. Kazakhstan strives for participation in all contra-terroristic operations. Probably, Kazakhstan will take part in the contra-terroristic operations, held in Afghanistan. I would like to remind that our country participated in the operation in Iraq. Of course, this participation is very important in the political sense. Such activities are held in the world under the NATO support or with the participation of countries, acting on the Alliance standards. There should be military bases, corresponding to the NATO standards in Kazakhstan. I believe that the outcome documents of the forum will display Kazakhstan?s attitude toward cooperation between all structures, involved in the sphere of regional security, including the Afghanistan issues. Kazakhstan will support the idea that the interstate structures such as the CSTO and the SCO can cooperate with NATO as well as separate countries?, N.Kuzmin concluded.