NATO’s Secretary-General announced on Wednesday that he will meet “in the coming days” with officials from Sweden, Finland and Turkey to try to overcome Ankara’s opposition to the two Nordic countries’ accession ahead of the Atlantic Alliance summit.
“We are in close contact, of course, with Turkey, an important NATO ally, and with the two countries that have applied for NATO membership, Finland and Sweden,” Jens Stoltenberg told a news conference with the head of US diplomacy, Antony Blinken, in Washington.
“I will call a meeting in a few days” in Brussels “with senior officials” to “make sure we move forward with the applications,” he added.
The head of the Western military alliance said he “intended” to have an agreement “before the NATO summit” scheduled for June 28-30 in Madrid.
“At the same time, I know that to move forward we need the agreement of the 30 allies” of the organization, he acknowledged.
As a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Sweden and Finland applied to join NATO on May 18.
But Turkey has opened a crisis within the Alliance by opposing the accession of these two countries, which have received the support of the vast majority of the other Member States.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused Stockholm and Helsinki of harboring “terrorists” from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
“Finland and Sweden have made it clear that they are willing to discuss how to address the concerns raised by Turkey, in particular about the threats that the PKK poses to Turkey,” Stoltenberg explained.
“We know that no other NATO ally has suffered as much from terrorist attacks as Turkey,” he added.
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