Monitoring Desk
BRUSSELS: Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary-General, on Tuesday played down the importance of Sweden and Finland joining the world’s biggest security organization at the time when Turkiye refuses to ratify their membership, mostly due to a dispute with Sweden.
Stoltenberg said that the main question is not whether Sweden and Finland are ratified together. The real question is that they are both ratified as full members as soon as possible.
The long-held consensus at the group has been that both the neighbors should join at the same time.
Sweden and Finland abandoned decades of nonalignment policy and applied to join the thirty-nation alliance in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year. All NATO members except Hungary and Turkiye have ratified their accession, but unanimity is needed.
Finland and Sweden making efforts to join NATO
Turkiye accuses the government in Stockholm is too lenient toward groups it deems as terror outfits or existential threats, including Kurdish organizations.
Earlier this month, Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkish Foreign Minister, said Ankara has fewer issues with Finland joining.
Cavusoglu stressed, however, that it was up to the security alliance to decide whether to accept one nation only or the Nordic duo together.
So far, Finland has supported Sweden also and insisted they should join alliance together.
Stoltenberg said that he is hopeful that both will be full members and are working hard to get both the membership as soon as possible.
He said that both nations would be welcomed in at NATO’s upcoming summit in Lithuania in July.
