Other events in Baltic States

April 13-15, the final planning conference of multinational exercise Amber Hope 2011 will be held in Nemencine, reports BC the press service of the National Defence Ministry.

Delegates representing participants of the exercise will put the final touches on the preparation process, discuss administration, provision, logistic and other tasks that must be completed before the beginning of the training event, and tour the location and infrastructure of the exercise.

Amber Hope 2011 will be the largest multinational exercise Lithuania will host this year. The event will take place on June 12 –23 in Klaipeda and Pabrade (Svencioniu region.).

The crisis-response format exercise will involve over 2 thousand military and civilian participants from 8 NATO members and countries cooperating with NATO under the Partnership for Peace Programme (PfP): Estonia, Georgia, United States of America, Canada, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Finland. Other countries and organisations will also delegate observers to the exercise.

The goal of Amber Hope 2011 is to coordinate collective actions of NATO and other states in multinational crisis response operations with regard to varying equipment and assets, and different structure and procedures in the units of different countries completing the operations. The exercise will also provide an opportunity to test and improve host nation support rendered for incoming allied forces.

Planning of the exercise is done by the Joint Headquarters of the Lithuanian Armed Forces that will also be in charge of control and command of Amber Hope 2011 due on June 12-23.

Multinational exercise Amber Hope has been held in Lithuania since 1995 with personnel typically deployed by Lithuania, Poland and Latvia. In 1997 the decision was made to organise Amber Hope. The largest event in the series took place in 2001. The event involved 2,800 participants from 14 countries. Last exercise was held in Klaipeda in 2007.