Uzbekistan does not have the capability to participate in the CIS Rescue Force Corpus, Kazakhstan's Deputy Emergencies Minister Valery Petrov said.
“(Uzbekistan) is not withdrawing from the Corpus altogether, but it is not going to contribute its forces to the CIS Force Corpus,” Petrov told journalists in Astana on Tuesday on the margins of a meeting of the CIS council for natural and man-made disasters, which he is chairing in 2012.
At the Council meeting, an Uzbek representative told his counterparts that Tashkent does not have enough equipment and rescue personnel to participate in the CIS Force Corpus, he said.
“All other CIS members confirmed their participation in the Force Corpus and will participate,” he said.
The CIS Force Corpus will include 2,000 pieces of emergency and rescue equipment and 2,000 rescue squads, said Alexander Goncharov, Belarusian Deputy Emergencies Minister.
“We concentrated significant forces and can re-deploy them to provide response in case a serious emergency occurs in one of the eleven CIS countries,” he added.
Very soon the Force Corpus will conduct a joint exercise, “which will allow to practice coordination in dozens of possible man-made and natural disasters,” Goncharov said.
The CIS Rescue Force Corpus was set up following a decision of the CIS Council of Heads of Government in 1994. The decision was signed by 12 countries, including Uzbekistan which contributed around 100 rescuers and doctors ands several vehicles.
