CIS SECURITY SERVICES OPEN ANTITERROR EXERCISES IN ARMENIA
by Vladimir Zainetdinov
ITAR-TASS News Agency
September 26, 2006 Tuesday
Security services of the CIS and Collective Security Treaty
Organisation (CSTO) countries opened the massive exercises Atom –
Antiterrror-2006 at the Armyanskaya nuclear power plant on Tuesday.
The exercises will continue through Friday.
The CIS Aniterrorist Centre’s chief Colonel-General Boris Mylnikov
told reporters that the Atom – Antiterror-2006 operative-strategic
exercises would be a drill of planning and conducting the search "to
reveal and destroy sabotage groups that infiltrated the territory of
Armenia and seized a nuclear power plant in the city of Metsamor".
Workers of the Armenian National Security Service and the Russian
Federal Security Service’s Special Task Centre will act as "terrorists"
who have been secretly moving in Armenia for ten days with designs
to seize the Armaynskaya nuclear power plant, Mylnikov said.
He said that antiterrorists divisions of CIS security services would
hold the exercises of this scale for the first time jointly with the
allied headquarters of the CSTO and Armenian army units that are a
part of the CSTO Collective Rapid Deployment Forces.
The Armenian National Security Service and antiterrorist units of the
FSB Special Task Centre will play a main role in the exercises. When
"terrorists" are spotted, the Armenian army’s motorised infantry
battalion of the Collective Rapid Deployment Forces in the
Trans-Caucasus and two companies of special forces will join the
action, Mylnikov said.
The active phase of the exercises, at which the anti-terrorist forces
will free the "seized" nuclear power plant will be held on Thursday.
Representatives of G8 countries, the antiterrorist division of the
OSCE Secretariat, the counter-terrorist committee of the UN Security
Council, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and the Shanghai Cooperation
Organisation’s Regional Antiterrorist Structure have been invited to
the exercises in a capacity of observers.
The US, Greece, France, China and the OSCE have confirmed their
attending the exercises.
Security services of Azerbaijan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan will not
participate, Mylnikov said.