NATO denies Georgia war-games agenda Europe Deutsche Welle 05.05.2009: “‘This is not a NATO exercise,’ an alliance spokesperson confirmed to Deutsche Welle. ‘This is a PFP exercise.”
“‘Because it’s a PFP exercise, it’s open to everybody which also means that everybody was fully informed when it was proposed in late spring of last year,’ the spokesperson added. ‘Nobody was forced to participate and Russia chose not to. But they knew exactly what was going on and there was no issue. Even when they said recently that they were concerned about the exercise, we said: ‘although the subscription date had passed, why don’t you send some observers?’ But they declined that as well. There is nothing controversial from our point of view.'”