RAWALPINDI, April 9: An eight-member delegation, led by Defence Secretary Lt-Gen (Rtd) Hamid Nawaz Khan, left for Turkey on Tuesday to attend the 11th Pakistan-Turkey Military Consultative Group (MCG) meeting being held there from April 10-13, says a defence ministry statement.

The military consultative group was formed in 1988 to extend cooperation and exchange experiences in the fields of military training and defence production between the two countries and to review geo-political environment of the region.

The meeting is held every year in the two countries alternately. As a result of the last meeting held in Rawalpindi in November 2000, an agreement was signed on March 22, 2001 on “cooperation in the military fields of training, technique and science”.

The group, this year, will review the progress made since the last meeting and explore ways to raise the status of the forum to high-level military dialogue to highlight new avenues of cooperation between the two countries.

The defence secretary is also scheduled to visit Azerbaijan from April 15 to 17.

Pakistan and Azerbaijan enjoy close bilateral relations and have been extending cooperation to each other in a number of fields including defence.

During the visit of Azerbaijan’s defence minister to Pakistan in May, 2001, a joint statement was signed in Islamabad, agreeing to develop partnership by initiating institutionalized defence cooperation.