Inauguration of the NATO Center of Excellence for Security Force Assistance
On 26 March 2019 the Inauguration Ceremony of NATO SFA COE, NATO’s Center of Excellence for Security Force Assistance, was held at the Cesano, near Rome, within the Italian Army Infantry School facility. The ceremony was attended by the Italian Chief of Defense, Gen. Enzo Vecciarelli, the Chief of Defense of the Albanian Republic, Gen.B. Bardhyl Kollcaku and the Deputy Chief of Defense of the Republic of Slovenia, Gen.B. Robert Glavas, together with the representative of NATO Allied Command Transformation, General Nerim Bitlislioglu.
The NATO SFA COE, which sees Italy, Slovenia and Albania as Sponsor Nations, is a project born in 2016 under the proposal of the Italian Ministry of Defense with the aim of creating a reference hub dedicated to promoting the efforts of the Atlantic Alliance for stabilization and reconstruction in any crisis scenario.
The Center was formally established on 13 December 2017 with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the participating nations and Allied Command Transformation (ACT) and obtained NATO accreditation in December 2018.”This Center – underlined General Vecciarelli – is part of a wider effort to support NATO’s three commitments: collective defense, crisis management and cooperation in the security sector”.
The task of the Center is to contribute to the development and experimentation of concepts, doctrine, lessons learned in operational theaters and to the standardization of capacities within the Alliance in the SFA sector in the context of training and training activities in favor of Local Security Forces guided to create and develop sustainable capabilities over time.
The representative of Allied Command Transformation, General Bitlislioglu, in his speech underlined that “the specific competence of NATO COE is indispensable for supporting the Alliance command structure, the forces in the field and the other decentralized NATO bodies”.
The event ended with a visit to the infrastructure and the signing of the honor register by the Chief of Defense.
Unofficial translation by EDR On-Line
Photo courtesy Italian MoD
