US privatises its military aid to Georgia

[Whoa_Nelly]

Nick Paton Walsh in Tbilisi
Tuesday January 6, 2004
The Guardian

The Pentagon is to privatise its military presence in Georgia by contracting a team of retired US military officers to equip and advise the former Soviet republic's crumbling military, embellishing an eastward expansion that has enraged Moscow.
After a Georgian appeal for support to the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, during a visit last month, a team of 20-30 private defence consultants are already in Tbilisi. Their employer, a Washington security firm, Cubic, has a three-year $15m contract with the Pentagon to support all aspects of the Georgian ministry of defence.

A senior western diplomat said: "One of the goals is to make the army units capable of seizing and defending a given objective. The consultants will work with US defence liaisons in the US Tbilisi embassy and the European command in Stuttgart." He said the programme could continue for much longer than three years.

About 60 US military trainers arrived in Georgia in the summer of 2002 to help the dilapidated military deal with the perceived threat of terrorists linked to al-Qaida hiding in the Pankisi gorge, on the border with Russian Chechnya. The "train and equip" programme, which left the Kremlin silently fuming at a Pentagon presence on its southern border, was supposed to end this year

more...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/georgia/story/0,14065,1116716,00.html

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

1. The real reson????

"...the Cubic team would also improve protection of the pipeline that will take Caspian oil from Baku to Turkey through Georgia."

[La_Serpiente]

2. There has been a lot of American activity in Central Asia

The US also wanted to build an air force base in Kazakistan. The Kazakistan government turned down the US.

It is almost as if they are militarizing the region.

[Baclava]

3. hey now

Won't this make Alabama jealous? Oh......nevermind..........