Russia, China command satisfied with SCO exercise dress rehearsal

Itar-Tass

CHEBARKUL RANGE (Chelyabinsk region) - The military commanders of Russia and China have highly assessed the results of the dress rehearsal of the active phase of the Peace Mission 2007 joint antiterrorist manoeuvres of member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) that was conducted on Monday.

"Officials that were at the observation site unanimously assessed the exercise - the training session passed quite satisfactorily. All tactical tasks have been fulfilled at a rather high level," head of the manoeuvres from the Russian side Colonel-General Vladimir Moltenskoi said. "So we consider the training to be quite successful," he underlined.

However, the Russian military commander admitted that "not all tasks have been fulfilled at the proper level yet" and a number of problems have been exposed during the dress rehearsal. "The main thing is to make all the developments on the tactical field quickly appear on the monitor so that everybody could understand what the troops are doing," he said. General Moltenskoi stressed that the activities of the SCO countries' armed forces are conducted "within the framework of the legal field and international law."

He noted earlier that under the scenario of the SCO drill training, combat tasks fulfilment would be practiced in view of the deteriorating domestic political situation in the state "A" (a conventional state in the Chelyabinsk and Kurgan regions in Russia that joined the SCO), the masterminding of a coup by separatists and opposition with a view to topple the legitimate president and the government of the country and the escalation of the internal armed conflict.

The SCO states have taken political, diplomatic, economic and forcible measures to settle the conflict, including a joint anti-terrorist operation in cooperation with the state authorities and the law enforcement agencies of the state "A" in order to destroy illegal armed units, Moltenskoi emphasised.

More than 4,000 servicemen from five SCO states (Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) participated in the general rehearsal. Uzbek officers worked at the headquarters of the exercises, Col. Igor Konashenkov, an assistant to the exercise commander on the Russian side, told Itar-Tass. Over 500 pieces of military and special hardware and about 70 aircraft of Russia and China were involved in the dress rehearsal, according to him.

According to Konashenkov, taking part in the general rehearsal were all formations of the United Army Group army and attack aviation, units of the Ground and Airborne Troops, as well as units of the Interior Troops, Federal Security Service and the Federal Penitentiary Service.

During the dress rehearsal, 120 paratroopers and six airborne combat vehicles on each side from Russia and China landed from military transport airplanes Ilyushin-76MD. According to Konashenkov, tasks to destroy terrorists in a settlement were fulfilled only with blank ammunition. The aviation and armoured vehicles used combat ammunition.

Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces General Yuri Baluyevsky said earlier that the Peace Mission 2007 manoeuvres mean a specific step in the sphere of the training of armed forces of SCO member states for joint countering threats to security existing in the region. Along with terrorism, extremism, drug aggression, organised crime and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, Baluyevsky also mentioned problems related to ensuring security "in the conditions of growing pressure of mass media of certain Western states." "These states continue to make attempts to convince our nations of the necessity of the formation of the so-called 'true democratic' institutions of state and public management after the fashion of the West, which causes destabilisation of the situation in the states of the region," said the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces.

The first such manoeuvres of SCO member countries were conducted in China in 2005.