BRUSSELS, Feb 20: Tajikistan on Wednesday became the 27th country to join NATO’s Partnership for Peace (PFP) cooperation programme, the trans-Atlantic alliance said.

Sharif Rahimov, who heads the former Soviet Central Asian republic’s liaison office to NATO, sealed the relationship at a weekly meeting of NATO ambassadors.

“By signing the PFP framework document, Tajikistan has made the distance between Dushanbe and Brussels only confined to geography,” NATO Secretary General George Robertson said.

“Tajikistan’s courageous decision to support the international coalition against terrorism (after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States) did not go unnoticed in NATO,” Roberston added.

Joining PFP opens the door for Tajikistan — a staging post for US and European forces in Afghanistan — to take part in NATO programmes in such areas as military reform, civil emergency planning, science and the environment.

Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have been part of PFP since 1994.—AFP