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ROTA, Spain — A two-day Africa Partnership Station conference began here today as the APS Nashville cruise came to a close, gathering more than 150 multinational participants from more than 20 nations to review the lessons learns this year and discuss APS goals for 2010.
"This deployment on USS Nashville to West and Central Africa and the Gulf of Guinea has been incredibly successful," said Adm. Mark Fitzgerald, Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa. "We've had many countries participating from Europe, Africa, the United States, and even Brazil."
The conference is geared at analyzing lessons learned from Nashville's maritime safety and security capacity building deployment and allows a multilateral avenue of dialogue for the formation of concepts for future APS deployments.
"I hope we get some good steerage out of this conference about what we need to do for the next deployments as we continue with the APS program," said Fitzgerald. "I think regional exercises are going to be a very important piece in 2010, and you can't get there without doing the things APS has been doing."
Fitzgerald said the APS strides of teambuilding, the ability to communicate between nations and the ability to have trained professionals at sea make that next phase of regional cooperation possible. He also cautioned that the key element of communication must always be kept in the forefront of the mind in order to meet current threats and challenges.
"We need to build trust and confidence in each other," he said. "If we don't share information amongst nations, we're doomed to failure. The most important aspect here is the transparency of being able to share information. This starts allowing us to share information across borders."
The information shared will continue to enhance maritime safety and security for the continent of Africa and help combat challenges such as piracy, illegal fishing, illegal migration and drug smuggling.
"We couldn't do this without the participation of so many countries and so many people from different agencies within governments," said Fitzgerald. "It's important to thwart the many threats that we have not just in Africa, but ones that could migrate to other parts of the world.."
APS is an international initiative developed by Naval Forces Europe and Africa. To learn more about Africa Partnership Station and its mission, visit the APS website at www.c6f.navy.mil/apshome.html.
| Date Taken: | 05.29.2009 |
| Date Posted: | 05.29.2009 07:23 |
| Story ID: | 34263 |
| Location: | ROTA, ES |
| Web Views: | 264 |
| Downloads: | 256 |
This work, Africa Partnership Station Nashville Wrap Up: Sets Stage for Africa Partnership Station 2010, by CPO David Holmes, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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