Nato chief to visit Türkiye to push for Sweden’s reunification

Oslo (Best Hindu News): June 2 (IANS) | NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said he is doing his utmost to ensure that Sweden’s entry into the alliance is completed as soon as possible and that he will travel to Turkey soon to facilitate the process. He made the remarks at a press conference after the conclusion of a two-day informal meeting of NATO foreign ministers in the Norwegian capital Oslo on Thursday. The meeting was also attended by Sweden’s foreign minister, but Turkey’s foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu remained absent.

Stoltenberg welcomed Sweden’s new anti-terror laws that came into force on Thursday, Xinhua news agency reported.

This, he said, shows that Sweden has fulfilled what it had committed to do under the trilateral memorandum concluded in Madrid (by Finland, Sweden and Turkey) last year.

In March, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed to ask his country’s parliament to vote on Finland’s NATO membership bid, but delayed Sweden’s case, arguing that Turkey still wanted to extradite 120 members from Sweden. What it regards as terrorist groups before its country will positively adopt the Swedish membership bid.

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

“(At the summit) we will take a decision to further strengthen our deterrence and defence,” he said. We will agree on a new defense investment resolution, in which a minimum of two per cent of GDP will be spent on defence.

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