June 24-25, 2009 the 3^rd Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC) Security Forum will be held in Astana.

The idea to host the Forum in the Republic of Kazakhstan was proposed by the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan N.Nazarbayev and was supported by the North-Atlantic Council.

For the first time the EAPC Security Forum will be conducted on the post-soviet territory and Asian continent. Also it will be one of the largest events, hosted in our country in 2009.

The former two Forums were hold in Sweden (Are city) in 2005 and in Macedonia (Ohrid city) in 2007.

The Security Forum is going to be an informal ground for open and free discussions on regional and global security issues. The main idea of the Forum is “Security through Partnership”. During the plenary and thematic sessions of the Forum the broad range of topics will be discussed, including security in Central Asia and Caucasus, situation in Afghanistan and energy security issues.

More than 50 EAPC and NATO member-countries, other states, different international organizations and mass-media representatives will participate in the Forum.

At the same time the NATO Parliamentary Assembly (NATO PA) is planning to organize in Kazakhstan in 2009 the Rose-Roth inter-parliamentary Seminar – the forum of inter-parliamentary dialogue on actual questions of Euro-Atlantic security.

The cooperation between the Republic of Kazakhstan and the NATO was started after Kazakhstan had joined the North-Atlantic Cooperation Council in 1992, and which transformed to the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC) in 1997.

In order to develop the political dialogue and military cooperation with the NATO, Kazakhstan has joined “Partnership for peace” (PfP) Program on May 27, 1994.

Currently, the bilateral cooperation with the North-Atlantic Alliance is fulfilling in accordance with the agreements, reached during the negotiations between the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan N.Nazarbayev and the NATO Secretary General J.de Hoop Scheffer in the NATO Headquarters (December 2006), and also in accordance with task of the Head of the State to deepen and intensify the practical cooperation with the NATO.

The collaboration between the Republic of Kazakhstan and the NATO is accomplished within the training and equipping of certain armed forces divisions, particularly “Kazbat”/ “Kazbrig” peacekeeping force, in accordance with the NATO standards;  training of a special rescue crew, which can participate in international rescue and humanitarian operations under the NATO/UN mandate; boundary security cooperation; armed forces reforms and using the NATO potential in science, emergency civil planning, environmental problems solving.

As the NATO Secretary General J.de Hoop Scheffer stated, the Republic of Kazakhstan is a key country in Central Asia for the NATO. Kazakhstan is the only Central-Asian state, with whom the NATO builds relations within the NATO Individual partnership activity plan.