Turkey, Sweden, Finland are holding a new round of talks on the Nordic countries’ NATO bid
Representatives from Turkey, Sweden and Finland met on Friday in the Finnish city of Vantaa and agreed to continue talks on the Nordic countries’ accession to NATO at an expert level in the coming autumn, the Finnish government said.
Turkey, Finland and Sweden signed a trilateral memorandum in Madrid on June 28, in which they agreed to strengthen cooperation in the fight against terrorism and establish a permanent joint mechanism to monitor the implementation of the memorandum.
“Finland hosted the first meeting of the Permanent Joint Mechanism at the Konigstedt mansion in Vantaa, Finland, on 26 August, with the participation of experts from the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, the Interior, Justice and Defence, from the Presidential and Prime Minister’s Administrations, as well as the Intelligence Service” , the statement said.
The parties discussed the concrete steps to implement the trilateral memorandum and agreed that the mechanism will continue with an expert-level meeting taking place this fall, the statement added.
Finland and Sweden are awaiting the ratification of their NATO applications. As of August 25, 23 countries out of 30 have already completed the formal procedure to welcome Finland and Sweden into the alliance. The applications have not been ratified by Spain, Greece, Portugal, Slovakia, Turkey, the Czech Republic and Hungary.
On May 18, three months after Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine, Finland and Sweden submitted their applications for NATO membership, abandoning decades of neutrality. Turkey previously blocked the application review process due to Helsinki and Stockholm’s long-standing support for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Turkey considers a terrorist, and demanded that the Nordic states stop supporting the PKK.
(Only the headline and image of this report may have been reworked by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
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