Meeting of Chiefs of Defence

August 5, 2011 11:36 AM

Maj-Gen. Alojz Šteiner, Chief of the General Staff of the Slovenian Armed Forces, and his Hungarian counterpart, Chief of the MoD Defence Staff Gen. Dr. Tibor Benkő had a meeting in Hungary on Thursday, July 28. At the event held in Lenti, the two parties discussed, among others, the future of the Hungarian-Italian-Slovenian Multinational Land Forces (MLF), the issue of pooling and sharing forces and defence capabilities, and the ways how to further strengthen military-to-military relations between the two countries.

Just prior to their meeting the Slovenian and the Hungarian Chiefs of Defence gave a short interview. Gen. Tibor Benkő said that at their second bilateral meeting they would focus on the MLF’s enlargement and its future tasks. As it has been reported, Croatia has already expressed her intention to take part in the activity of the Multinational Land Forces. Another important point on the agenda was the pooling and sharing of forces and capabilities. A good example for this is the operation of the MLF – emphasized the Hungarian Chief of Defence, who also pointed out that at the request of the Slovenian party, the unique role the HDF played in disaster relief, with particular regard to the deployment of Hungarian Defence Forces in Kolontár and Devecser, would be a priority issue during the bilateral negotiations.

Maj-Gen. Alojz Šteiner said that he expected successful negotiations at present, similar to the ones they had last year in Slovenia. He confirmed that in their bilateral meeting the main topic would be the enlargement of the MLF and exploring opportunities for strengthening its role. In his opinion the cooperation of Slovenian and Hungarian troops and their joint service in the Balkans missions in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo has been fruitful. He also underlined that with the current economic situation in the world the question of pooling and sharing is crucial.

Further to the bilateral military relations the Slovenian Chief of Defence said that besides training and follow-on training, he saw prospects for extending the cooperation in many other areas as well, for example in logistics and intelligence. Maj-Gen. Alojz Šteiner mentioned that plans for Hungarian–Slovenian military relations in 2012 would also be discussed at their meeting.