The Slovenian Armed Forces presented Tuesday the first of the 135 armoured personnel carriers that it has bought from Finnish contractor Patria. The vehicle will undergo a four-week validation test before the military will officially take over the vehicle.

Colonel Dragan Bavcar, who chaired the commission deciding on the contract for 8-wheeled armoured personnel carriers, told the press that Defence Minister Karl Erjavec appointed a group of experts for the validation.

The head of the 72-member validation group, Miroslav Galun, said the goal was to confirm that the vehicles met the contract demands.

During the first week of validation, the group will inspect the APC's maintenance characteristics, a week later it will focus on endurance, followed by a tactics check, including shooting, said Galun.

Bavcar said that during the validation period, the APC would be in military's service, however the ministry would take over the carriers only after they were validated.

Bavcar also said that so far some eight APCs had been produced, however the ministry did not start the validation because the preliminary verification tests were unsatisfactory.

The first vehicle, which the army took over on Monday, is nearly five months late and the Defence Ministry has said that it would penalise Patria for the late delivery in accordance with the contract.

The APCs were originally equipped with an overhead remote controlled weapon stations produced by Israeli contractor Elbit, but the system failed a test and was replaced with one made by the Norwegian company Kongsberg.

The Patria APCs were acquired in a deal that had been investigated by a parliamentary inquiry commission, which however failed to adopt a final report over partisan divisions.

The scandal culminated only two weeks before Slovenian general election, after Finnish public broadcaster YLE ran a TV report which accused the outgoing Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa of accepting a bribe from Patria.

Slovenian MOD
04.10.2008