| Media Note Office of the Spokesman Washington, DC October 20, 2006 Stability Police Trainer Class Graduates
The Political-Military Bureau’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Regional Security, Michael W. Coulter, spoke today to the 132 members of the third class of stability police trainers to graduate from the Center of Excellence for Stability Policy Units (COESPU) in Vicenza, Italy. COESPU, a joint effort of the Governments of the United States and Italy, was established in the fall of 2005 as an international training center designed to fill the "security gap" between military forces and civilian police in peacekeeping operations. Graduates of the four and six week courses return to train stability police units in their own countries. Graduates of this third class are from Cameroon, India, Jordan, Kenya, and Senegal. COESPU is one of three primary components under the President’s five-year Global Peace Operations Initiative (GPOI) that is part of a broader effort agreed to by the G-8 at the 2004 Sea Island Summit to address major gaps in international peace operations. The gaps identified by the G-8 include a shortage of capable peacekeepers, limited national capabilities to train and sustain peacekeeping proficiencies, a lack of mechanisms to help countries deploy and sustain peacekeepers in the field, and a shortage of stability police. In addition to working with Italy to establish COESPU and train 3,000 stability police trainers by 2010, GPOI’s goals include training and equipping over 75,000 peacekeepers worldwide by 2010 and working with G-8 and other partners to develop a transportation and logistics support arrangement designed to address the current gap in deployment and logistics support available to peace operations. For additional information on GPOI, please visit http://www.state.gov/t/pm/ppa/pmppt/. |
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