British Military Instructors Train Georgian Servicemen

A British Military Advisory Training Team (BMATT), consisting of a major and 4 senior non commissioned officers, will arrive in Tbilisi on February 24.

As the British Embassy to Georgia reports, they will be accompanied by 6 Georgian military personnel, who since January have been undertaking training as instructors at the BMATT training center at Vyskov in the Czech Republic.

The British instructors are experts in training junior officers and NCOs. They have experience gained from providing training assistance in other central and eastern European countries.

The BMATT team and the Georgian instructors will conduct a 5 week training program for another 40 Georgian military personnel. The theme of the training is focused on peace support operations. When they graduate on 2 April 2004 the Georgian instructors will train GTEP battalions in 11th brigade from April to September this year. The BMATT team will continue to have instructions in Georgia to assist with this training.

The training is a part of outreach the military assistance program offered to Georgia by the United Kingdom as part of the NATO partnership for peace program [pfp].