NATO chief to visit Turkey to push Sweden's accession


Oslo, Jun 2 (IANS): Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General, has said that he is working hard to ensure Sweden's accession to the alliance is completed as soon as possible, and that he will soon travel to Turkey to facilitate the process.

He made the remarks on Thursday at a press conference after the conclusion of a two-day informal meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Oslo, Norway's capital. The meeting was also attended by Sweden's foreign minister, but Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu was notably absent.

Stoltenberg welcomed Sweden's new anti-terrorism laws that entered into force on Thursday, Xinhua news agency reported.

"That shows that Sweden has delivered on what they committed to do under the Trilateral Memorandum concluded last year in Madrid (by Finland, Sweden and Turkey)," he said.

In March, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed to ask his country's Parliament to vote on Finland's NATO membership bid, but delayed that of Sweden, arguing that Turkey still expected Sweden to extradite 120 members of what it considers terrorist groups before his country approaches the Swedish membership bid "positively".

Stoltenberg called the informal meeting of foreign ministers an "opportunity to discuss key issues as we prepare for our summit in Vilnius (Lithuania) in July".

"(At the summit) we will take decisions to further strengthen our deterrence and defence. We will agree a new Defense Investment Pledge, with two per cent of GDP spent on defence as the minimum," he said.

He told reporters that the foreign ministers also discussed upgrading the existing NATO-Ukraine Commission to a new NATO-Ukraine Council.

 

  

Top Stories


Leave a Comment

Title: NATO chief to visit Turkey to push Sweden's accession



You have 2000 characters left.

Disclaimer:

Please write your correct name and email address. Kindly do not post any personal, abusive, defamatory, infringing, obscene, indecent, discriminatory or unlawful or similar comments. Daijiworld.com will not be responsible for any defamatory message posted under this article.

Please note that sending false messages to insult, defame, intimidate, mislead or deceive people or to intentionally cause public disorder is punishable under law. It is obligatory on Daijiworld to provide the IP address and other details of senders of such comments, to the authority concerned upon request.

Hence, sending offensive comments using daijiworld will be purely at your own risk, and in no way will Daijiworld.com be held responsible.