NATO’s Secretary General announced this Friday that a meeting will be held in Brussels “in mid-March” with Turkey, Sweden and Finland to advance the process of the two Nordic countries joining the Atlantic Alliance.
Jens Stoltenberg added that the meeting had been arranged with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
At a conference in Tallinn to mark the anniversary of Estonia’s independence, but also the first anniversary of the military offensive launched by Russia in Ukraine, Jens Stoltenberg said he saw “progress regarding the historic accession of Sweden and Finland” to the Treaty. Organization of the North Atlantic, in which he reports on the meeting he will organize in a few weeks at Alliance headquarters.
Recalling that “28 of the 30 Allies have already ratified the accession protocols of Sweden and Finland,” the Norwegian leader said that at a meeting last week in Ankara with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, it was agreed to “reopen the country to start up”. organize a meeting between Finland, Sweden and Turkey under the auspices of NATO “in mid-March” “to discuss the implementation of last June’s agreement and the completion of the accession process”.
Initially, Turkey vetoed the expansion of the Atlantic Alliance as the two Nordic countries have a “highly tolerant” policy with Kurdish armed organizations, but at the NATO summit in Madrid in June 2022, Sweden, Finland and Turkey signed a memorandum of understanding to unblock the situation.
Regarding the other allied country that has not yet ratified the accession of Sweden and Finland, Stoltenberg noted that “it is positive that the Hungarian parliament will start the ratification process next week”.
Hungarian deputies will debate the issue between March 6 and 9 before voting separately for each of the two countries, with this debate postponed several times due to a “congestion” in legislation, with the opposition accusing Viktor Orbán’s government of slow down the process. .
“Our goal is for Finland and Sweden to join as soon as possible,” NATO’s Secretary General reiterated today.
Sweden and Finland abandoned their traditional policy of military non-alignment and applied to join the Atlantic Alliance in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Source: DN
