Czech army to provide 350 soldiers for EU battlegroup
Baku, September 2 (AZERTAC). The Czech Republic will provide 350 soldiers for the EU`s battlegroup next year, Czech chief-of-staff Vlastimil Picek said after meeting EU military committee head Hakan Syren Thursday.
The battlegroup will comprise a total of 2800 troops from six European countries. Apart from Czechs it will include Germans, Austrians, Croats, Macedonians and the Irish, Picek said.
The Czech military plans to send a mechanised company plus the necessary logistic equipment to the battlegroup, he said.
The battlegroup will be ready to intervene in a selected area if need be. For now it is not expected to be deployed in areas such as Libya tormented by a civil war.
There is no plan to deploy it in Libya. However, everything will depend on the Libyan people`s will. At present the Libyans do not wish the presence of any western soldiers in their country, said Syren.
He said the EU battlegroups may perform a wide range of activities from humanitarian aid and a forcible separation of parties to a conflict up to reconstruction tasks.
Picek and Syren also discussed the program of military forces sharing within the EU.
The Czechs can mainly offer their military chemical warfare experts.
"In this field we've been top experts for years and we`ve played a key role in NATO as well," Picek said.
Other areas Prague can help in is the training of helicopter pilots and the Czech military's logistic skills, he said.
The battlegroup is to be completed in the second half of 2012.
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