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Starting from January 1 of this year, the Embassy of Estonia in Astana will serve as the contact point embassy of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Kazakhstan, Tengrinews reports citing ERR. Before Estonia, Latvian embassy was the contact point embassy of the NATO in Kazakhstan.
“Estonian Embassy's role of a contact point embassy for NATO demonstrates NATO's trust to us (Estonia) and expands the channels of communications both within NATO and our partner country (Kazakhstan). Estonia is expected to become a reliable bridge in Kazakhstan-NATO relations,” the message of Estonian Foreign Ministry reads.
According to the official website of the organization, the system of contact point embassies was developed in 1992 to support the Alliance’s partnership activities in countries participating in the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC), Partnership for Peace (PfP), Mediterranean Dialogue (MD) and Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI). Starting from 2001, NATO extended the network to other countries across the world.
As for Kazakhstan, it is a member of the EAPC since 1992 and a member of PfP since 1995.
In every partner country, the embassy of one of the members of the NATO may serve as a contact point embassy.
The scope of responsibilities of a contact point embassy includes disseminating the information about the NATO's mission and policy, ensuring information sharing and making reviews of the partner country’s security policies for NATO, organizing visits of NATO representatives and providing support to the partner country in implementation of other agreed activities with the organization.
By Assel Satubaldina
