The Joint Command North-East (JCNE) and its predecessor in Karup, NATO's Headquarters Allied Forces Baltic Approaches (BALTAP), provided security in the Baltic region and played an active role in ongoing peacekeeping operations in the Balkans and Afghanistan, NATO said on its website.

It also helped to integrate new NATO members and implement NATO's Partnership for Peace Programme.

Responsibility for JCNE missions will now be distributed between NATO's Allied Forces Northern Europe, headed by German general Gerhard Back; the headquarters in Germany of NATO's Land Component Command; and the alliance's Joint Warfare Centre in Norway, JCNE press officer Erik Hviid told AFP.

The transfer of command was officially passed over to Back on Wednesday by the JNCE head, Danish general Jan Scharling, during a ceremony in Karup.

The process of closing the JNCE, which employed 340 people from nine countries, began on June 2 and is scheduled to be completed in December.

The decision to close it was made at a NATO summit in Prague in November 2002, as part of moves to reduce the number of NATO commands.

"In the new streamlined NATO command structure only one Joint Forces Command, in Brunssum, the Netherlands, will remain in the northern region," the alliance said on its website.

The regional centre in Karup was opened in 1962 as the headquarters of BALTAP. As a result of a change in NATO command structure it became the headquarters of the JNCE in 2000.

Danish Queen Margrethe II and Danish Defence Minister Soeren Gade attended the ceremony, Hviid said.

WAR.WIRE